.

"What have I been doing?" he asked. "I've been off my head. Take no
notice of anything I may have said. Have I been shouting?"

"You shouted just before you fell."

"What did I shout?"

I told him, though it bore little meaning to my mind. He looked
sharply at us, and then he shrugged his shoulders.

"It's the words of a song," said he. "Well, the question is, What am I
to do now? I didn't thought I was so weak. Where did you get the
water?"

I pointed towards the burn, and he staggered off to the bank. There he
lay down upon his face, and he drank until I thought he would never have
done. His long skinny neck was outstretched like a horse's, and he made
a loud supping noise with his lips. At last he got up with a long sigh,
and wiped his moustache with his sleeve.

"That's better," said he. "Have you any food?"

I had crammed two bits of oat-cake into my pocket when I left home, and
these he crushed into his mouth and swallowed. Then he squared his
shoulders, puffed out his chest, and patted his ribs with the flat of
his hands.

"I am sure that I owe you exceedingly well," said he. "You have been
very kind to a stranger. But I see that you have had occasion to open
my bag."

"We hoped that we might find wine or brandy there when you fainted."

"Ah! I have nothing there but just a little--how do you say it?--my
savings. They are not much, but I must live quietly upon them until I
find something to do. Now one could live quietly here, I should say.
I could not have come upon a more peaceful place, without perhaps so
much as a _gendarme_ nearer than that town."

"You haven't told us yet who you are, where you come from, nor what you
have been," said Jim bluntly.

The stranger looked him up and down with a critical eye:

"My word, but you would make a grenadier for a flank company," said he.
"As to what you ask, I might take offence at it from other lips; but you
have a right to know, since you have received me with so great courtesy.
My name is Bonaventure de Lapp. I am a soldier and a wanderer by trade,
and I have come from Dunkirk, as you may see printed upon the boat."

"I thought that you had been shipwrecked!" said I.

But he looked at me with the straight gaze of an honest man.

"That is right," said he, "but the ship went from Dunkirk, and this is
one of her boats. The crew got away in the long boat, and she went down
so quickly that I had no time to put anything into her