In amazement Adam stood looking at the man. In the haggard face, with its unkempt beard and glassy eyes he fancied he saw something familiar. Memory knocked to enter his brain. Then, with a suddenness that gave him a shock, he recognized a man he had known in England—an elder brother of Henry Wainsworth, supposed to have died years before—drowned while attempting to escape from an unjust sentence of imprisonment for treason.
“Wainsworth!” he said, “good faith! what is the meaning of this?”
The man sank back on the floor, a ghost of a smile passing across his face. He moved his lips again, but Adam heard not a word.
Bending quickly down, he became aware that the man was begging for water. He caught up the bucket and hastened forth, presently finding the spring, to which a little path had been worn in the grass.
Back at once, he placed the dipper to the dried-out lips and saw this fellow-being drink with an evidence of joy such as can only come to the dying. Wainsworth shivered a little, as the dipper left his teeth, and jerked his hand toward the silent child, sitting so near, on the floor. Adam comprehended. He gave more of the water to the small, brown baby. It patted the dipper with its tiny hands and looked up at him dumbly.
“What in the world has happened here?” said Rust.
Making a mighty effort, the man on the floor partially raised his head and arms. He looked at Adam with a hungering light in his eyes. “I’m—done—for,” he said, thickly and feebly.
Adam hustled together the blankets on the floor and made a pillow, which he placed for Wainsworth to lie on. “Shall I put you into the bed?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “I’m crushed,” he said, winking from his eyes the already gathering film that tells of the coming end. “Tree—fell—killed the—wife. I—crawled—here.”
Adam looked at him helplessly. He knew the man was dying. He felt what agonies the man must have suffered. “Man!” he said, “can’t I get you something to eat?”