"Just Conny, sir;" and the boy led the way rapidly through what looked like a pathless tangle, until below a sharp ledge of rocks they struck a little stream by whose side they found a narrow but easy passage into the very heart of the wood.
"THEY CAME UPON A SMALL WEATHER-BEATEN CABIN."
"Surely no human being can live here," thought the doctor; but at that very moment they came upon a small weather-beaten cabin, so low and gray that one might easily have passed it unnoticed among the rocks that hung over it, and the bushes that crowded around and in front of it. The roof, thatched with bark, had fallen in at one end, and the place looked as if it might have been forsaken for years. But the boy led him around to the rear, and they entered quite a comfortable room, with a decent bed in one corner, on which a man was lying with his face to the wall.
"Feyther," said the boy, "I've brought the doctor to ye."
The man neither moved nor answered, and the doctor, going up to the bed, was shocked to see that he was dead. He turned to Conny and asked, "Has your father been long sick?"
"Always sick, sir. He couldn't work at the North, and they told him if he came here the air would cure him, and the smell of the trees, but he coughed just the same."
"Where is your mother?"
"Dead, sir."
"And there is no one but you and your father?"