Fanning, lying there miserably ill, had no
thought--uttered no word--on behalf of his own interests during those
directions to his servant. All his anxiety was for the comfort and
well-being of the stranger within his gates. It was only a part of that
unselfishness which was characteristic of the man--which had become, in
fact, second nature.

Presently he turned again to Sellon.

"I beg a thousand pardons," he said. "How very thoughtless of me, but
it never seems to have occurred to me all this time that you may have
business of your own to attend to. If that is the case, even at the
risk of appearing inhospitable, I beg you will not delay your journey
here on my account. I shall be on my legs again in a day or two--one
thing about this complaint, its attacks though sharp are frequently
short--and apart from necessity it must be very tedious for you to feel
yourself tied down in a rough and comfortless place such as this."

"My dear fellow, don't you bother yourself about me," replied the other,
decisively. "I'm going to see you through it before I move on. When a
fellow's ill in an out-of-the-way hole like this he wants a `man and a
brother' about him; and I'm going to stick to you like a leech until
you're yourself again. So don't jaw any more, there's a good chap, but
just snooze off right away."

In announcing this resolution the speaker was fully alive to what he had
undertaken. It was the outcome of no mere passing impulse of
generosity. And really, to make up one's mind deliberately to dwell for
an indefinite period in a very rough and uncomfortable tenement, in the
midst of a burnt-up starving wilderness, destitute not only of the
ordinary comforts of life, but almost of anything fit to eat or drink--
this, too, alone with a perfect stranger in for a possibly long bout of
severe fever--is something of an act of self-sacrifice, which we hope,
virtuous reader, you will remember to set off against the man's other
failings and derelictions.

If circumstances had rendered Maurice Sellon a bit of a scamp--if a
further combination of the same might conceivably render him a still
greater one--yet he was, according to the definition of those who knew
him, "not half a bad fellow in the main." His resolution to see his
newly found acquaintance through what would certainly prove a tedious if
not a dangerous illness, was purely a generous one, dashed by no selfish
motive. A subsequent idea, which flashed u