The next morning Mr. Belcher found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to win the reward for himself.

Then he turned his grays up the hill, had a long consultation with Mr. Buffum, who informed him of the fate of old Tilden, and started at a rapid pace toward Number Nine.

CHAPTER VII.

IN WHICH JIM AND MIKE CONLIN PASS THROUGH A GREAT TRIAL AND COME OUT VICTORIOUS.

“There, Turk, there they be!” said Jim to his dog, pointing to his passengers, as he stood caressing him, with one foot on the land and the other holding the boat to the shore.  “There’s the little chap that I’ve brung to play with ye, an’ there’s the sick man that we’ve got to take care on.  Now don’t ye make no row.”

Turk looked up into his master’s face, then surveyed the new comers with a wag of his tail that had all the force of a welcome, and, when Harry leaped on shore, he smelt him over, licked his hand, and accepted him as a satisfactory companion.

Jim towed his boat around a point into a little cove where there was a beach, and then drew it by a long, strong pull entirely out of the water.  Lifting Benedict and carrying him to his own cabin, he left him in charge of Harry and the dog, while he went to make his bed in “Number Ten.”  His arrangements completed, he transferred his patient to the quarters prepared for him, where, upheld and pillowed by the sweetest couch that weary body ever rested upon, he sank into slumber.

Harry and the dog became inseparable companions at once; and as it was necessary for Jim to watch with Benedict during the night, he had no difficulty in inducing the new friends to occupy his cabin together.  The dog understood his responsibility and the lad accepted his protector; and when both had been bountifully fed they went to sleep side by side.

It was, however, a troubled night at Number Ten.  The patient’s imagination had been excited, his frame had undergone a great fatigue, and the fresh air, no less than the rain that had found its way to his person through all his wrappings, on the previous night, had produced a powerful impression upon his nervous system.  It was not strange that the morning found Jim unrefreshed, and his patient in a high, delirious fever.

“Now’s the time,” said Jim to himself, “when a feller wants some sort o’ religion or a woman; an’ I hain’t got nothin’ but a big dog an’ a little boy, an’ no doctor nearer ’n forty mile.”