n. "Nat, my poor fellow,"
he cried, "is it you?"

The man looked at him wildly for a few moments, as if he were dreaming,
before the light of recognition came into his sunken eyes.

"Master Fred!" he whispered. "You? That's right. Put me out of my
misery at once."

"Are you wounded?"

"Water--for Heaven's sake, water!"

Fred started up.

Water? How could he get water?

The lake was close at hand, if he could reach it unseen, for he shrank
from calling help, which meant condemning the poor fellow to a
prisoner's life as soon as he grew better. So, forcing his way along as
cautiously as he could, he contrived to reach one of the trees whose
boughs overhung the lake, and taking advantage of the shelter, he lay
down upon his chest, grasped a stout hazel, lowered himself to where he
could reach the surface, where he took off his steel morion, dipped it
full, and rose carefully to bear the refreshing fluid to the suffering
man.

It was not an easy task, for the undergrowth seemed to be more tangled
than ever; but by stepping cautiously, he managed to bear almost every
drop, and kneeling down, he gave the poor fellow a little at a time, an
appealing look in the sufferer's eyes seeming to ask for more and more.

"Can you speak, Nat?" Fred said at last, as the man lay back with his
eyes closed, and without opening them he softly bent his head.

"Are you wounded?"

"Yes; badly," came in a faint whisper.

"You were hurt at the last encounter?"

"Yes, and crawled here. Water!"

Fred administered more, every drop seeming delicious to the fevered lips
of the wounded man.

Just then Fred remembered that he had a little bread in the wallet at
his side; and breaking it up, he soaked a small piece in the water, and
placed it between poor Nat's lips.

This was eaten, and a few more scraps, the refreshment seeming to revive
the sufferer wonderfully, and he looked up now in Fred's eyes, as he
whispered faintly--

"I was dying of thirst. I hid here--after the fight--and used to crawl
at night to my old garden for food. Then I grew too weak. Master Fred,
it would have been all over, if you had not come."

"Thank Heaven! I heard you," said Fred, giving the poor fellow a few
more scraps of the moistened bread till he signed to him to cease, and
then he looked up in his benefactor's face with a faint smile on his
parched and cracked lips.

"Oughtn't you to kill me, Master Fred?" he whispered.

"Oh, Nat, do