The mother stared at her son, half pleased, half terrified. She did not know what to think.
"Franz Martin," she said earnestly, "what is wrong with you? Are you talking in delirium, or do you know that you sent for me?"
"Yes, yes, mother," laughed Franz Martin; "my mind is clear now and the fever is past. But my limbs were all atremble; I could not come down to you, and I wanted so much to talk to you. My knees are shaky even now, and I could not get very far."
"But what is it? What was it? Tell me about it," urged the mother, sitting down on the hay beside her son.
"I will explain it all to you, mother, just as it happened," he said quietly, as he leaned back against the hay; "but first look at that poor, gaunt, little boy down there, who hasn't a decent garment to his name, whom no one thinks worthy of a kind word, and who is known only as 'Stupid Rudi.'"
The mother looked down at Rudi, who was watching the herdsman with much concern to see whether he was going to faint again.
"Well, and then?" asked the mother intently.
"He saved my life, mother. If it had not been for this little boy, I should still be lying out on the ground in deadly fever, or it might even be all ended with me by this time."
Then Franz Martin told her everything that had happened since the afternoon before,—how Rudi had stayed with him all night and had cared for him and relieved him from the consuming thirst and fever, and had cooled the fire in his head. The cleverest person in the world could not have done it better, and perhaps no other person would have done it for him.