it, she set a crock of water to warm, and undressed the man slowly.
Then, the water being ready, she washed and laid him out, chafing his
limbs and talking to herself all the while.

"Fair, straight legs," she said; "beautiful body that leapt in my
side, forty years back, and thrilled me! How proud I was! Why did
God make you beautiful?"

All night she sat caressing him. And the smoke of the peat-turves,
finding no exit and no draught to carry them up the chimney, crept
around and killed her quietly beside her son.

THE DOCTOR'S FOUNDLING.

There are said to be many vipers on the Downs above the sea; but it
was so pleasant to find a breeze up there allaying the fervid
afternoon, that I risked the consequences and stretched myself at
full length, tilting my straw hat well over my nose.

Presently, above the _tic-a-tic-tick_ of the grasshoppers, and the
wail of a passing gull, a human sound seemed to start abruptly out of
the solitude--the voice of a man singing. I rose on my elbow, and
pushed the straw hat up a bit. Under its brim through the quivering
atmosphere, I saw the fellow, two hundred yards away, a dark
obtrusive blot on the bronze landscape. He was coming along the
track that would lead him down-hill to the port; and his voice fell
louder on the still air--

"Ho! the prickly briar,
It prickles my throat so sore--
If I get out o' the prickly briar,
I'll never get in any more."

"Ho! just loosen the rope"--

At this point I must have come within his view, for he halted a
moment, and then turned abruptly out of the track towards me,--
a scare-crow of a figure, powdered white with dust. In spite of the
weather, he wore his tattered coat buttoned at the throat, with the
collar turned up. Probably he possessed no shirt; certainly no
socks, for his toes protruded from the broken boots. He was quite
young.

Without salutation he dropped on the turf two paces off and
remarked--

"It's bleedin' 'ot."

There was just a pause while he cast his eyes back on the country he
had travelled; then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the
direction of the port, he inquired--

"'Ow's the old lot?"

Said I, "Look here; you're Dick Jago. How far have you walked
to-day?"

He had turned on me as if ready with a sharp question, but changed
his mind and answered doggedly--

"All the way from Drakeport."

"Very well; then it's right-about-face with you and back