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“I told him I could take him to mother’s cottage, and that he could dry his clothes there and welcome.

“‘Can your mother keep a secret?’ he asked.

“‘Well, she could keep one well enough if she could remember it,’ I told him; ‘but you might tell her all the secrets of the Freemasons, and Foresters, and Buffalers and Oddfellers as ever was, to-night: and she’d have forgotten all about ’em to-morrow mornin’.’

“He seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself up by holdin’ on to me, for it seemed as if his limbs was cramped, the use of ’em was almost gone. I felt as he came agen me, that his clothes was wet and mucky.

“‘You haven’t been and fell into the fish-pond, have you, sir?’ I asked.

“He made no answer to my question; he didn’t seem even to have heard it. I could see now he was standin’ upon his feet that he was a tall, fine-made man, a head and shoulders higher than me.

“‘Take me to your mother’s cottage,’ he said, ‘and get me some dry clothes if you can; I’ll pay you well for your trouble.’

“I knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden gate in the garden wall, so I led him that way. He could scarcely walk at first, and it was only by leanin’ heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get along. I got him through the gate, leavin’ it unlocked behind me, and trustin’ to the chance of that not bein’ noticed by the under-gardener, who had the care of the key, and was a careless chap enough. I took him across the meadows, and brought him up here, still keepin’ away from the village, and in the fields, where there wasn’t a creature to see us at that time o’ night; and so I got him into the room down-stairs, where mother was a-sittin’ over the fire gettin’ my bit o’ supper ready for me.

“I put the strange chap in a chair agen the fire, and then for the first time I had a good look at him. I never see anybody in such a state before. He was all over green damp and muck, and his hands was scratched and cut to pieces. I got his clothes off him how I could, for he was like a child in my hands, and sat starin’ at the fire as helpless as any baby; only givin’ a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was a-goin’ to bust. At last he dropped into a kind of a doze, a stupid sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the press bedstead in the room under this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and watched him, and kep’ the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he ‘woke up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this minute.

“I begged him not to think of such a thing and told him he warn’t fit to move for ever so long; but he said he must go, and he got up, and though he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes together, he wouldn’t be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes as I’d dried and cleaned as well as I could while he laid asleep. I did manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked a dreadful objeck, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that I’d washed and tied up with a handkercher. He could only get his coat on by buttoning it on round his neck, for he couldn’t put a sleeve upon his broken arm. But he held out agen everything, though he groaned every now and then; and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands, and the cut upon his forehead, and his stiff limbs and broken arm, he’d plenty of call to groan; and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and ready to go.