the old man's shoulders,
covering his face and hands and feet with eager kisses.

"Down, Brutus, down!" said the old man, in a tongue which Gigi could
not understand. "Where hast thou been so long, good dog? And what new
pet hast thou brought for my colony?" He looked towards Gigi with
keen, kind eyes. "Come hither, my lad," he said in the same tongue.

But Gigi only stared, not understanding. He was growing afraid of this
queer old man, who spoke a strange language and had wild animals for
his friends; who read, too, in a great black book! Gigi had heard of
wicked wizards and sorcerers, and he believed that he saw one now. He
turned about and tried to run away. But his poor head grew dizzy, and
before he knew it he had fallen, and lay sobbing and shivering, unable
to rise.

Presently he felt the dog's gentle tongue licking his face. A moment
after, kind, strong arms lifted him and bore him into the little hut.
The old man laid Gigi on a cot beside the window, and after laying his
hand on the boy's head and wrist, went away and returned with something
in a cup.

"Drink this, my child," he said. And this time Gigi understood. He
drank and felt better. Then the old man asked him in the tongue which
Gigi knew, "Are you hungry, lad?"

The boy nodded, and his eyes must have told how nearly starved he was.
The old man went swiftly to a little cupboard in the wall, and soon
came back with bread and milk in an earthen bowl.

"Eat," he said, lifting Gigi's head on his arm. "Eat this good bread,
my son, and drink the warm milk of my friend the doe, which I had just
set aside, not expecting you. Then you shall sleep here on my pallet.
And soon we shall be right smiling and happy all!"

The kind old eyes beamed on Gigi while he devoured his breakfast like a
starved animal, without a word of thanks. When he had finished, the
kind old hands brought water and bathed the tired body, bound up the
bleeding hands and feet with refreshing ointment, and laid Gigi back
again to rest upon the cot beside the rose-screened window.

There Gigi lay and slept; slept and dreamed; dreamed and went over
again by fits and starts the strange adventures of the past two days.
But strangest of all, though by far the pleasantest, was that picture
which he had seen when he came out into the clearing upon the back of
Brutus. And this picture, with queer variations, filled the foreground
of Gigi's dreaming.

X

THE HERMIT