Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/160

 up. The boy touched the hand that Nicholas was licking and found it burning with fever. The man was very thin; he had on the rough clothes that every one wears in the woods, but he  was fair-skinned and as unlike Half-Breed Jake  and his companions as it was possible to be. It needed no very long reflection to make it clear to  Hugh that this was John Edmonds.

Although it was quite true that Hugh did not know very much of the woodcraft and that, at  milking Hulda, he had come very near to being a  flat failure, there were still some crises to which  he was equal, for he was not a country doctor’s  son for nothing. He had helped his father more than once in emergencies very like this one, so  that he was not long at a loss what to do. John Edmonds must certainly be got to bed, but one  look at the bunks against the walls and the filthy  rags that lay piled upon them, assured Hugh that  the floor was infinitely preferable. He unpacked his own blankets, gathered up those that lay on  the bench and made a bed upon the rough board  flooring. It required almost unbelievable effort