Rex opened his eyes and looked at him again as if in protest.
“I was going to make a pillow for you out of your coat,” Miles explained. “You don’t feel able to walk till we get to a house, do you?”
Rex slowly shook his head. He was in that condition which sometimes comes to those in seasickness, when he didn’t care whether he lived or died.
“Have you got pain?” went on Miles.
“Only when I walk,” answered Rex; then, as if talking, too, hurt him, he closed his eyes and sank back upon the pillow the other made for him out of his coat.
Meantime clouds had been gathering in the west. Miles had been too much occupied with his unexpected charge to notice them. But now he looked up and saw the threatening aspect of the heavens with troubled countenance.
He rose to his feet and strode out into the middle of the road, looking first in one direction, then the other.
His eye brightened as he saw a buggy coming from the westward.
He watched impatiently, till it came up, and then saw that it contained two men. He held up his hand as a signal for them to stop. But the driver, who had been talking earnestly with his companion, cut the horse with his whip, shook his head and drove on.
Miles remained there, standing in the road, a hopeless droop coming over his whole figure.