pon him, and slowly
opened his mouth widely.

"Want some water?" I said; and I was going to him when he jerked
himself fiercely away, and showed his beautiful white teeth at me.

"Wo ho!" cried Morgan. "Mind, lad, or he'll have his teeth in you."

"He's thirsty," I said; and I held the tin baler half full of water to
him.

He looked at me, then at the water, and I could see his lips move and
his teeth part, showing his dry tongue quivering like that of a dog.
Then he fixed his eyes upon me again fiercely.

"Let me give it him," said Morgan, as the boy's mouth opened widely
again, and there was a pitiful, imploring look in his eyes.

Now I could not understand all that when I was so young, but I've often
thought about it since, and seemed to read it all, and how nature was
making him beg for water for his parched tongue, while his education
forced upon him the desire to fight me as a cruel enemy.

"There," I said, going a little nearer, pushing the baler close to his
hands, and drawing back.

He looked at me, then at the water, and back at me, fixing me with his
eyes, as one hand stole slowly from his side towards the baler, drawing
it nearer and nearer stealthily, as if in dread of my snatching it away;
and then it was at his lips, and he gulped down the contents.

"There, I'm not going to hurt you," I said, stretching out my hand for
the baler, and getting it, meaning to go and fill it once more; and as I
returned I saw that he was watching me so wildly that I walked up, with
him shrinking away as far as he could go, and offered the tin to him
again.

He took it in the same shrinking way, evidently expecting a blow, and
drank heavily once more.

"Well, he couldn't ha' swallowed much, Master George, else he wouldn't
be so thirsty," said Morgan. "Now give this here one a dose, though it
seems to me labour in vain; only it may make him go off a bit easy."

He filled the baler, and I knelt down again to sprinkle the poor
fellow's temples, and trickle a few drops once more between his lips,
the boy watching me the while, and then giving me the first notice of my
father's return by shuffling away in another direction.

"Poor wretch!" I heard my father mutter, as he gave me a piece of
bread-cake, and pointed to the boy, before taking the cork from a
bottle, and slowly dropping a spoonful or two of spirit between the
man's teeth.

After this he waited, and I saw that the boy was watching him wildly.
Then