.

"Oh!" he gasped, and his own voice startled him with its husky,
despairing tone, while he bent lower, and it seemed to him that he could
not detect the boy's breath playing upon his cheek.

"Oh, what have I done?" he panted, and catching at the boy's shoulders
he began to draw him up into a sitting position, with some wild idea
that this would enable him to regain his breath.

But the next moment he had lowered him back upon the rough pallet, for a
cry Punch uttered proved that he was very much alive.

"I say," he cried, "whatcher doing of? Don't! You hurt?"

"Oh, Punch," cried Pen, panting hard now, "how you frightened me!"

"Why, I never did nothink," cried the boy in an ill-used tone.

"No, no. Lie still. I only thought you were getting worse. You were
so still, and I could not hear you breathe."

"But you shouldn't," grumbled the wounded boy surlily, as he screwed
first one shoulder up to his ear and then the other. "Hff! You did
hurt! What did you expect? Think I ought to be snoring? I say,
though, give a fellow some more of that milk, will you? I'm thirsty.
Couldn't you get some bread--not to eat, but to sop in it?"

"I don't think I could eat anything, but--" The boy stopped short as he
lay passing his tongue over his fever-cracked lips, for the doorway of
the miserable cabin was suddenly darkened, and Pen sprang round to find
himself face to face with his visitor of the previous evening, who stood
before him with the wooden vessel in one hand and a coarse-looking
bread-cake in the other.

She looked searchingly and suspiciously at Pen for a few moments; and
then, as if seeing no cause for fear, she stepped quickly in, placed the
food she had brought upon the rough shelf, and then bent over Punch and
laid one work-roughened hand upon the boy's forehead, while he stared up
at her wonderingly.

The girl turned to look round at Pen, and uttered a few words hurriedly
in her Spanish patois. Then, as if recollecting herself, she caught the
bread-cake from where she had placed it, broke a piece off, and put it
in the young rifleman's hand, speaking again quickly, every word being
incomprehensible, though her movements were plain enough as she signed
to him to eat.

"Yes, I know what you mean," said Pen smiling; "but I want the bread for
him," and he pointed to the wounded boy.

The peasant-girl showed on the instant that though she could not
understand the stranger's words his signs were cl