e.

"Well, what is it? But you had better not. Shut your eyes and have a
bit of a nap till you are rested and the faintness has gone. I shall be
rested, too, then, and I can get you down into the hut, where I tell you
there's a bed, and, better still, Punch, a draught of sweet warm milk."

"Gammon!" said the boy again; and he hung more heavily upon Pen's
arm.--"Want to whisper."

"Well, what is it?" said Pen, trying hard to master the feeling of
despair that was creeping over him.

"Them wolves!" whispered the boy. "Don't let them get me, comrade, when
I'm gone."

"You shut your eyes and go to sleep," cried Pen angrily.

"No," said the boy, speaking more strongly now. "I aren't a baby, and I
know what I'm saying. You tell me you won't let them have me, and then
I will go to sleep; and then if I don't wake up no more--"

"What!" cried Pen, speaking with a simulated anger, "you won't be such a
coward as to go and leave me all alone here?"

The boy started; his eyes brightened a little, and he gazed
half-wonderingly in his companion's face.

"I--I didn't think of that, comrade," he faltered. "I was thinking I
was going like some of our poor chaps; but I don't want to shirk.
There, I'll try not."

"Of course you will," said Pen harshly. "Now then, try and have a nap."

The boy closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was breathing
steadily and well, but evidently suffering now and then in his sleep,
for the hand that clasped Pen's gave a sudden jerk at intervals.

Quite an hour, during which the watcher did not stir, till there was a
sharper twitch and the boy's eyes opened, to look wonderingly in his
companion's as if he could not recall where he was.

"Have a little water now, Punch?"

"Drop," he said; but the drop proved to be a thirsty draught, and he
spoke quite in his senses now as he put a brief question.

"Is it far?" he said.

"To the hut? No. Do you think you can bear me to get you on my back
again?"

"Yes. Going to. Look sharp!"

But as soon as the boy felt his companion take hold of his hand after
restopping the water-bottle, Punch whispered, "Stop!"

"What is it? Would you like to wait a little longer?"

"No. Give me a bullet out of a cartridge."

"A bullet? What for?"

"To bite," said the boy with a grim smile.

Pen hesitated for a moment in doubt, looking in the boy's smiling eyes
the while. Then, as a flash of recollection of stories he had heard
passed thro