“Let me help you,” said the boy, rising and approaching.
“Back! you know not what you do,” said the prince sternly. “You must not touch me. You have done so once to-day. It may cost you your life. Ask not why, but obey my orders.”
Not less surprised at the nature of these remarks than at the severe tone in which they were uttered, the boy re-seated himself in silence, while Bladud removed the breastplate and examined his wounds.
They were deeper than he had imagined, the three arrow-heads being half imbedded in his flesh.
“Nothing serious,” he said, drawing out the heads and stanching the flow of blood with a little moss. “Come, now, I will show you my home, and give you something to eat before you tell me more of your history. You shall have a couch in one of my outhouses. Have a care as you walk with me that you do not come against me, or touch me even with a finger. My reasons you may not know, but—remember what I say.”
Bladud spoke the last words with the severity that he had assumed before; then, dismissing the subject, he commented on the beauty of the landscape, the wickedness of robbers, the liveliness of animated nature and things in general with the cheerful air that had been habitual to him before he was compelled to flee the face of man. The pleasure he had felt in his brief intercourse with the gruff hunter of the Swamp had remained a bright spot in his lonely life. He naturally enjoyed with much greater zest the company of the lively boy who had thus unexpectedly crossed his path, but when he retired for the night—having told the lad to make for himself a couch in the fire-wood hut—the utter desolation of his life became, if possible, more deeply impressed on him.
During the night his wounds inflamed and became much more painful, and in the morning—whether from this cause or not, we cannot say—he found himself in a high fever.
His new friend, like most healthy boys, was a profound sleeper, and when the time for breakfast arrived he found it necessary to get up and awake him.
“Ho! lad, rise,” he cried at the entrance to the firewood hut, “you slumber soundly. Come out and help me to get ready our morning meal.”
The lad obeyed at once.