m of a gorge. Bending over me was the most terrifying person I had
ever seen in all my forest wanderings. It was a man and he was a regular
giant. He had a head of long snow-white hair and a long white beard that
made him look like Father Time. But his face was young, almost
child-like, except his eyes. They were big and black and wild. When he
saw my eyes were open he gave a kind of leap into the air and shouted at
the top of his lungs: 'He is alive again! My son has come back!'

"Before I could say a word he stooped and grabbed me up in his arms. As
my left leg hurt me terribly, I knew it must be broken. I groaned and
tried to tell him, but he hung me over his shoulder as though I were a
feather and went crashing through the woods. I fainted with pain and
didn't come to myself again for quite a while. We were still traveling
along as though the fellow had on seven league boots. The pain in my leg
became even worse and I fainted again. When I came to myself the second
time, the sun was shining down through the trees. I was lying on the
ground and this crazy fellow--I was sure by that time that he _was_
crazy--was circling around me, muttering and laughing to himself.

"I tried again to talk to him, but I was suffering too much to do more
than mumble. I don't know how long we'd been there. I suppose he'd only
stopped to rest, for before long he hoisted me over his shoulder again
and away we went. Quite a while after that we struck that little valley
where the hut stands. He carried me into the shack and laid me on the
floor. I hadn't the least idea of what he was going to do, and I was too
sick to care. I knew he was crazy and that I could expect almost
anything to happen. What really happened was the biggest kind of a
surprise. He undressed me with the greatest gentleness and then examined
my broken leg, and afterward set it and fixed it up with the skill of a
doctor, in spite of the fact that he had no conveniences to help him.
You can imagine how I suffered during the process. I groaned a good deal
and he must have really sympathized with me, for he crooned and lamented
over me all the time he was doing it. He kept calling me his dear son
and said over and over, 'God has given you back to me at last.'

"Then he went out of the hut and came back after a while with a forest
of balsam boughs. He made me a bough bed in one corner of the room,
spread a blanket over it and laid me on it. After that he rummaged
around the