"And here's a banana that I've brought you, for I knew how thirsty you must be, shut up in this hot place," went on Freddy, as he tugged from his pocket a huge ripe plantain.
As Burton awkwardly held out his bound hands to take it, the boy saw for the first time that they were knotted together at the wrists, and flushed up indignantly.
"What? have they really tied your hands? What a shame! Well, eat this banana first, and then I'll untie them for you."
The thirsty man's parched lips sucked in the juicy pulp with a wolfish eagerness that told its own story; and then Freddy, eager to help him, went to work manfully upon the cruel cord, which at first resisted all his efforts.
"Best let it be," said Bob Burton gruffly. "Thank'ee all the same, little 'un; but ye'll only 'urt them little fingers o' your'n."
But the brave little champion was not to be so easily balked of his kind purpose; and, bruise his fingers as he might, he persevered gallantly, till at length the hastily and clumsily tied knot gave way, and Burton's stiffened, aching hands were free.
Free once more! And then, with that sense of recovered strength, the wild beast in that perverted nature started into life again, and there came to him a thought from hell.
His worst enemy's only son was alone with him, and wholly in his power; and one strangling clutch of his strong hands on that slender throat would acquit at once and for ever the heavy debt of revenge that he had so long hungered to repay. Ah! to see that hard, pitiless man's face as he bent over the corpse of his only child! and to watch him writhe, and mock his agony!
It was but for a moment, and then the hideous temptation was past and gone like the phantom of a nightmare; but its tremendous reaction turned the overwrought man sick and faint, and he sank dizzily back against the wall.
The boy eyed him anxiously for an instant, and then, climbing on to his knee, began to wipe off, with the end of the sash that served him as a waist-belt, the big drops of moisture that beaded the tortured face.