When the fire was lighted he filled his pannikin at the brook and put it on to boil, and cutting several slices of buffalo tongue, he thrust short stakes through them and set them up before the fire to roast. By this time the water was boiling, so he took it off with difficulty, nearly burning his fingers and singeing the tail of his coat in so doing. Into the pannikin he put a lump of maple sugar, and stirred it about with a stick, and tasted it. It seemed to him even better than tea or coffee. It was absolutely delicious! Really one has no notion what he can do if he makes believe _very hard_. The human mind is a nicely balanced and extremely complex machine, and when thrown a little off the balance can be made to believe almost anything, as we see in the case of some poor monomaniacs, who have fancied that they were made of all sorts of things--glass and porcelain, and such like. No wonder then that poor Dick Varley, after so much suffering and hardship, came to regard that pannikin of hot sirup as the most delicious beverage he ever drank. During all these operations Crusoe sat on his haunches beside him and looked. And you haven't, no, you haven't got the most distant notion of the way in which that dog manoeuvred with his head and face. He opened his eyes wide, and cocked his ears, and turned his head first a little to one side, then a little to the other. After that he turned it a _good deal_ to one side, and then a good deal more to the other. Then he brought it straight, and raised one eyebrow a little, and then the other a little, and then both together very much. Then, when Dick paused to rest and did nothing, Crusoe looked mild for a moment, and yawned vociferously. Presently Dick moved--up went the ears again, and Crusoe came, in military parlance, "to the position of attention!" At last supper was ready and they began. Dick had purposely kept the dog's supper back from him, in order that they might eat it in company. And between every bite and sup that Dick took, he gave a bite--but not a sup--to Crusoe. Thus lovingly they ate together; and when Dick lay that night under the willow branches, looking up through them at the stars, with his feet to the fire and Crusoe close along his side, he thought it the best and sweetest supper he ever ate, and the happiest evening he ever spent--so wonderfully do circumstances modify our notions of felicity. Two weeks after this "Richard was himself again." The muscles were springy, and the blood coursed fast and free, as was its wont. Only a slight, and, perhaps, salutary feeling of weakness remained, to remind him that young muscles might again become more helpless than those of an aged man or a child.