" he answered,
with red cheeks and downcast eyes; "but this--but this--oh, how can
you ask me to stop? There isn't any one else to do anything, and it
helps a little, and they look for me to come every day; and if I did
not--oh, Uncle Richard, it would be too cruel! I can't do it! Do _you_
think papa would be pleased?"

"But you are mine, now, not his," said Trafford; with something like
displeasure in his tone; "aren't you aware of it?"

Noll said not a word, but stood with his eyes turned away from his
uncle's, and his cheeks crimsoning, while his breath came quick and
fast.

"Will you obey me or not?" Trafford asked, sternly.

Noll turned around and met his uncle's eye. He began to plead. His awe
of his uncle seemed to have vanished for the time, and Trafford was
astonished at the boy's earnestness and vehemence. Two or three times
he was about to put up his hand to command silence, but Noll redoubled
his pleading, and he continued to listen. All the remembrances of the
past dreary weeks--the want, the slow wasting, the flickering out of
life, the dismal laying away of the poor body in the sand--came to
Noll as vividly as the reality which he had witnessed, and made him
pray for relief with an earnestness and entreaty which ordinarily were
not his.

"Just think, Uncle Richard," said he, in conclusion, "papa would have
gone to their aid long ago. He bade me do all the good I could, and
you won't forbid me?--oh, I know you will not!--and won't you help me
to do more,--won't you, Uncle Richard?"

Trafford gloomily pushed his nephew away.

"Go!" he said; "I do not care to see you any more this afternoon."

Hardly had the boy turned away, however, before the quick thought
flashed into his mind that he had failed to ask him the question for
which he had called him. He might even now be ill, and he was sending
him away in anger!

"Noll!" exclaimed Trafford, "come back. Are you ill, my boy?"

"No, sir."

"Why are you so grave and sober of late?"

"I didn't know that I was, Uncle Richard."

Trafford looked keenly in his nephew's face, and at last drew him
toward himself. What if the fever should get a hold of the boy? he
thought, anxiously. There was no aid, no succor!

"Oh, Noll," he said, as tenderly as he might, "you cannot know what a
blow it would be to me to lose you. Won't you be careful for my sake?"

"Yes, Uncle Richard; I don't think there is much danger, though. It i