up. The boy touched the hand that Nicholas was licking and found it burning with fever. The man was very thin; he had on the rough clothes that every one wears in the woods, but he was fair-skinned and as unlike Half-Breed Jake and his companions as it was possible to be. It needed no very long reflection to make it clear to Hugh that this was John Edmonds.
Although it was quite true that Hugh did not know very much of the woodcraft and that, at milking Hulda, he had come very near to being a flat failure, there were still some crises to which he was equal, for he was not a country doctor’s son for nothing. He had helped his father more than once in emergencies very like this one, so that he was not long at a loss what to do. John Edmonds must certainly be got to bed, but one look at the bunks against the walls and the filthy rags that lay piled upon them, assured Hugh that the floor was infinitely preferable. He unpacked his own blankets, gathered up those that lay on the bench and made a bed upon the rough board flooring. It required almost unbelievable effort
