Davey was crooning and gurgling. He had crooked his little hands into the stranger's beard, and his mother saw with joy that the stranger held his head as though he feared to dislodge those little hands.
"No games, ma'am," he growled, "or it'll be the worse for you. We're desperate men. It's our lives we're fighting for."
"I knew that when I saw you," she said quietly.
She put some bread on the table, a mug of milk and a piece of cold meat.
"It is not much to offer you, but it is all I've got," she said. "I wish it were better, because you're wanting good wholesome food just now. I'll make some gruel for your friend and maybe there'll be an egg to-morrow, or I can set snares for a 'possum."
She took Davey from him and he turned to the table to eat. The man on the bed moaned wearily. She put Davey into his basket, lined with furry skins, and went to the sick man. The cloths that she had put over it to soak off the filthy rag which bound his head had served their purpose. She lifted them and the festering gash on his forehead was laid bare.
Her exclamation, or a twinge of pain as the air touched the wound, sharpened his brain. His eyes opened. He stared with semi-conscious gaze a moment. Then with a hoarse oath he sprang at her. His quivering lean fingers gripped her throat and clung tenaciously. The man at the table flung himself upon him and wrenched his hands away; they struggled for a moment, then the sick man dropped on to the bed again; but he shouted incoherently, his fever-bright eyes baleful by the flickering firelight.
"After the gaols, 'n the sea, 'n the bush, to be taken now and like this, by God—" he panted. "Let me be! Let me be, don't you see it's a trap!"
"It's all right," the other gasped. "Don't let your tongue run away with you, Steve."
"I'll not be taken alive," the man on the bed cried. "Not now, not after getting through so far, I'll not be taken alive, 'n the one that tries to take me'll not live either."