should be warmed in warm water, he said; then it should be
put very gently under the lid at the corner of the eye. The eye should
be bandaged with a handkerchief; and it was very desirable, he said, to
have the sufferer lie down, and if possible, go to sleep.

With those directions in mind, I hurried away in quest of the eyestone;
but at the house of the man to whom Bedell had sent me I found that the
eyestone had done its work and had already been lent to another
afflicted household, a mile away, where a woman had a sty in her eye. At
that place I overtook it.

The woman, whose sty had been cured, opened a drawer and took out the
eyestone, carefully wrapped in a piece of linen cloth. She handled it
gingerly, and as I gazed at the small gray piece of chalky secretion,
something of her own awe of it communicated itself to me. We dropped it
into the vial, to be "refreshed"; and then, buttoning it safe in the
pocket of my coat, I set off for home. Since I was now two or three
miles north of Lurvey's Mills, I took another and shorter road than that
by which I had come.

As it chanced, that road took me by the Dole farm, where little Ike
lived. I saw no one about the old, unpainted house or the long,
weathered barn, which with its sheds stood alongside the road. But as I
hurried by I heard some hogs making a great noise--apparently under the
barn. They were grunting, squealing, and "barking" gruffly, as if they
were angry.

As I stopped for an instant to listen, I heard a low, faint cry, almost
a moan, which seemed to come from under the barn. It was so unmistakably
a cry of distress that, in spite of my haste, I went up to the barn
door. Again I heard above the roars of the hogs that pitiful cry. The
great door of the barn stood partly open, and entering the dark,
evil-smelling old building, I walked slowly along toward that end of it
from which the sounds came.

Presently I came upon a rickety trapdoor, which opened into the hogpen;
the cover of the trapdoor was turned askew and hung down into the dark
hole. Beside the hole lay a heap of freshly pulled turnips, with the
green tops still on them.

The hogs were making a terrible noise below, but above their squealing I
heard those faint moans.

"Who's down there?" I called. "What's the matter?"

From the dark, foul hole there came up the plaintive voice of a child.
"Oh, oh, take me out! The hogs are eating me up! They've bit me and bit
me!"

It was little Ike.