s a sheet, said only:

"Oh, mother! help, I am dying!" and fell his whole length on the sand.
Thinking he was dead, the terrified boys ran off as hard as their legs
could carry them and in a few minutes they were out of sight.

But Pinocchio remained. Although from grief and fright he was more dead
than alive, nevertheless he ran and soaked his handkerchief in the sea
and began to bathe the temples of his poor school-fellow. Crying
bitterly in his despair, he kept calling him by name and saying to him:

"Eugene! my poor Eugene! Open your eyes and look at me! Why do you not
answer? I did not do it; indeed it was not I that hurt you so! believe
me, it was not! Open your eyes, Eugene. If you keep your eyes shut I
shall die, too. Oh! what shall I do? how shall I ever return home? How
can I ever have the courage to go back to my good mamma? What will
become of me? Where can I fly to? Oh! how much better it would have
been, a thousand times better, if I had only gone to school! Why did I
listen to my companions? they have been my ruin. The master said to me,
and my mamma repeated it often: 'Beware of bad companions!' Oh, dear!
what will become of me, what will become of me, what will become of me?"

And Pinocchio began to cry and sob, and to strike his head with his
fists, and to call poor Eugene by his name. Suddenly he heard the sound
of approaching footsteps.

He turned and saw two soldiers.

"What are you doing there, lying on the ground?" they asked Pinocchio.

"I am helping my school-fellow."

"Has he been hurt?"

"So it seems."

"Hurt indeed!" said one of them, stooping down and examining Eugene
closely.

"This boy has been wounded in the temple. Who wounded him?"

"Not I," stammered the puppet breathlessly.

"If it was not you, who then did it?"

"Not I," repeated Pinocchio.

"And with what was he wounded?"

"With this book." And the puppet picked up from the ground the Treatise
on Arithmetic, bound in cardboard and parchment, and showed it to the
soldier.

"And to whom does this belong?"

"To me."

"That is enough, nothing more is wanted. Get up and come with us at
once."

"But I--"

"Come along with us!"

"But I am innocent."

"Come along with us!"

Before they left, the soldiers called some fishermen who were passing at
that moment near the shore in their boat, and said to them:

"We give this boy who has been wounded in the head in your charge. Carry
him to your house and nurse h