in waiting upon him and watching with him that
the village children had to take a second look at his face when they
passed him to make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no other.
But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor assured
him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's face began
to recover something of its old look and expression, and once more his
pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of
worshipping three and four year old followers.

"How is Mr. Kirkwood?" was the question with which he was always greeted.
In the worst periods of the fever be rarely left his master. When he
did, and the question was put to him, he would shake his head sadly,
sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and faltering
words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a stalwart man as he was,
such a man as soldiers are made of in the great Continental armies.

"He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be no
better," and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a passionate
burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his
master, his ready optimism declared itself no less transparently.

"He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him
on hoss in little while." The kind-hearted creature's life was bound up
in that of his "master," as he loved to call him, in sovereign disregard
of the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such
recognition of another as their better. They could not understand how
he, so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and manner, could
speak of the man who employed him in any other way than as "Kirkwood,"
without even demeaning himself so far as to prefix a "Mr." to it. But
"my master" Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men
are born free and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a
master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger.
Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber and
getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was
in so much need. It worried him to see his servant returning after too
short an absence. The attendant who had helped him in the care of the
patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out of the house by
the urgency of his master's command that he should take plenty of
exercise in the open air.

Notwithstan