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“You never can tell,” said Jaikie to Jiminy; “backs are deceivin’, likewise names. I’ve looked in ever so many books by the man that wrote Robinson Crusoe, and there’s not an island in any of them.”

“Books are all stuff,” said Jiminy. “Let’s play ‘Tiger.'”

“Well,” replied Jaikie, “any way, it was out of a book I got ‘Tiger.'”

So Jaikie mounted on the platform, and they began to play ‘Tiger.’ This is how they played it. Jaikie had a bow and arrow, and he watched and waited silently up among the green leaves till Jiminy came, crawling as softly beneath as the tiger goes pit-pat in his own jungles. Then Jaikie drew the arrow to a head, and shot the tiger square on the back. With a mighty howl the beast sprang in the air, as though to reach Jaikie. But brave Jaikie only laughed, and in a moment the tiger fell on his back, pulled up its trouser-legs, and expired. For that is the way tigers always do. They cannot expire without pulling up their trouser-legs. If you do not believe me, ask the man at the Zoo.

Now, as the former story tells, it was Jaikie who used always to do what Jiminy bade him; but after Jaikie was hurt, helping Jiminy’s father to keep his church and manse, it was quite different. Jiminy used to come to Jaikie and say, “What shall we do to-day?” And then he used to wheel his friend in a little carriage the village joiner made, and afterwards carry him among the orchard trees to the place he wanted to go.

“Jiminy,” said Jaikie, “the flowers are bonnie in the plots, but they are a’ prisoners. Let us make a place where they can grow as they like.”

Perhaps he thought of himself laid weak and lonely, when the green world without was all a-growing and a-blowing.

“Bring some of the flowers up to this corner,” said Jaikie, the lame boy. And it was not long till Jiminy brought them. The ground was baked and dry, however, and soon they would have withered, but that Jaikie issued his commands, and Jiminy ran for pails upon pails of water from the little burn where now the water had stopped flowing, and only slept black in the pools with a little green scum over them.

“I can’t carry water all night like this,” said Jiminy at last. “I suppose we must give up this wild garden here in the corner of the orchard.”

“No,” said Jaikie, rubbing his lame ankle where it always hurt, “we must not give it up, for it is our very own, and I shall think about it to-night between the clock-strikes.”

For Jaikie used to lie awake and count the hours when the pain was at the worst. Jaikie now lived at the manse all the time (did I tell you that before?), for his father was dead.

So in the little room next to Jiminy’s, Jaikie lay awake and hearkened to the gentle breathing of his friend. Jiminy always said when he went to bed, “I’ll keep awake to-night sure, Jaikie, and talk to you.”

And Jaikie only smiled a wan smile with a soul in it, for he knew that as soon as Jiminy’s head touched the pillow he would be in the dim and beautiful country of Nod, leaving poor Jaikie to rub the leg in which the pains ran races up and down, and to listen and pray for the next striking of the clock.

As he lay, Jaikie thought of the flowers in the corner of the orchard thirsty and sick. It might be that they, like him, were sleepless and suffering. He remembered the rich clove carnations with their dower of a sweet savour, the dark indigo winking “blueys” or cornflowers, the spotted musk monkey-flowers, smelling like a village flower-show. They would all be drooping and sad. And it might be that the ferns would be dead–all but the hart’s-tongue; which, though moisture-loving, can yet, like the athlete, train itself to endure and abide thirsty and unslaked. But the thought of their pain worked in Jaikie’s heart.