IN EVIL PLIGHT 187

“Vou shall have some food directly it is prepared. Take
a drink of wine, and see if you can eat a bit of bread while
the broth is preparing.”

Charlie drank a little of the wine that was put to his lips,
and then broke up the bread and eat it crumb by crumb,
as if it were a great effort to do so, although he had diff-
culty in restraining himself from eating it voraciously.
When he had finished it he closed his eyes again, as if
sleep had overpowered him. An hour later there was a
touch on his shoulder.

“Here is some broth, young fellow; wake up and drink
that, it will do you good.”

Charlie, as before, slowly sipped down the broth, and
then really fell asleep, for the jolting had fatigued him ter-
ribly. It was evening when he awoke; two men were sit-
ting at a blazing fire. When he moved one of them
brought him another basin of broth, and fed him with a
spoon. Charlie had been long enough in the country to
know by the appearance of the room that he was in a peas-
ant’s hut. He wondered why he had been brought there,
and concluded that it must be because Allan Ramsay had
set so stringent a search on foot in the city, that they
considered it necessary to take him away.

“They will not keep me here long,” he said to himself.
“J am sure that I could walk now, and in another two or
three days I shall be strong enough to go some distance.
That soup has done me a deal of good; I believe half my
weakness is from hunger.” He no longer kept up the
appearance of unconsciousness, and in the morning put
various questions to the man who spoke Swedish as to what
had happened and how he came to be there. ‘This man
was evidently from his dress and appearance a Jew, while
the other was as unmistakably a peasant, a rough power-
fully-built man with an evil face. The Jew gave him but
little information, but told him that in a day or two, when