Before the first of February, the poor boy was almost crippled with the chilblains. Through the day, he hobbled about as best he could, often in great pain; and at night the tender skin of his feet, irritated by the warmth of the bed, would keep him awake for hours with a most intolerable burning and itching. "Why don't you walk straight? What do you go shuffling along in that kind of style for?" said Sharp to him one day, toward the last of January. "My feet are so sore," replied Henry, with a look of suffering, blended with patient endurance. "What's the matter with them, ha?" asked his master glancing down at the miserable apologies for shoes and stockings that but partially protected the child's feet front the snow whenever he stepped beyond the threshold. "They're frosted, sir," said Henry. "Frosted, ha? Pull off your shoes and stockings, and let me see." Henry drew off an old shoe, tied on with various appliances of twine and leather strings; and then removed a stocking that, through many gaping holes, revealed the red and shining skin beneath. That little foot was a sight to pain the heart of any one but a cruel tyrant. The heel, in many places, was of a dark purple, and seemed as if mortification were already begun. And in some places it was cracked open, and exhibited running sores. "Take off your other shoe and stocking," said Sharp, in authoritative tone. Henry obeyed, trembling all the while. This foot exhibited nearly the same marks of the progress of the painful disease. "What have you done for it?" asked Sharp, looking Henry in the face with a scowl. "Nothing but to put a little candle-grease on it at night before I went to bed," replied the child. "Come out here with me. I'll doctor you," said his master, turning away and disappearing through the back door. Henry followed as quickly as he could walk on his bare feet, that seemed ready to give way under him at ever step. When he got as far as the kitchen, he found Sharp waiting for him in the door. "Here, jump out into that snow-bank!" said he, pointing to a pile of snow that had been shoveled up only that morning, after a fall through the night, and lay loose and high. The poor boy looked down at his crippled, and, indeed, bleeding feet, and, as may well be supposed, hesitated to comply with the peremptory order. "Do you hear, sir?" exclaimed his master, seizing him by the collar, and pushing him out into the yard. Then catching him by one arm, he set him in the centre of the snow-bank, his naked feet and legs going down into it some twelve or eighteen inches. "Now stand there until I tell you to come out!" The child did not scream, for he had already learned to bear pain without uttering even the natural language of suffering; although the agony he endured for the next minute was terrible. At the end of that time, a motion of the head of his master gave him to understand that the ordeal was over.