"You're awful pretty," he gasps at last, "and I am dropping no end of blood off my arm on your bodice. Oh! how my leg hurts. Guess I have broken it clean in two." At every step Eleanor fears she must give in, the perspiration is standing out on her forehead, while her own wounds smart and ache. "I am afraid I shake you terribly up this hill; would you like me to rest a moment?" Eleanor hopes he will say yes, for her strength is giving out. "Sit on that stone, I'm just dying," moans the little lad. Eleanor eagerly assents, and moves him into a more comfortable position. "My mother is white like you," he says at last, raising his head. "Is she, dear? Are you better? Shall we go on?" "Yes, please. We may meet father, he is ever so big and dark. I shall be big and dark too, all the good men are black." "And the good women?" asks Eleanor, smiling in spite of her load. "Oh! white of course, white all over like you and mother, hands, feet, everything." Eleanor staggers on breathlessly up the hill, the boy seems to grow heavier at every step. She is nearly exhausted. He is like the weight of her sin, which increases with time. [Illustration: Eleanor staggers on breathlessly up the hill.] One or twice she stumbles, the boy clutches her round the neck, fearing she will fall upon him, and his hands half choke her. She gasps for breath. "Is it much farther?" she pants, turning sick and dizzy with the climb. "No, there is my house, that hut ahead, see." It has come in sight not a moment too soon, for Eleanor's arms are cramped and paralysed by supporting his body, her cheek pale with the heat, her heart fluttering spasmodically. Only a few steps more, and she will have reached the haven of refuge. How foolish it would be to fail now. Through sheer force of will she reaches the hut, and as the boy cries "Mother! mother!" she sinks exhausted in the entrance, still holding her suffering burden in her arms. A woman rushes out, and takes her bleeding son from the stranger's embrace. "He has been hurt," explains Eleanor faintly. "I carried him up the hill." "Oh, you good soul!" cries the grateful mother, feeling her son's arms and legs; "and you're just as done up as can be. Come in, you poor young thing, and I'll give you a drink of Zoo to pull you round." "No, thank you, I don't want anything. I am better now; but let me help you with the boy. We had better get his things off, and wash the wounds." Together the two women tend the child. His leg is strained, not broken, and they put him to bed and watch him till he falls into a restless sleep. Then their eyes meet, and the mother holds out her hand to Eleanor. "God bless you!" she says; "if anything had happened to Tombo we should have broken our hearts. He is our only child." Eleanor has recounted the history of the accident, leaving her share in the background, and making as light of it as possible.