TRAPPER JOR 171

“Hello, there! What on airth’s up now? Ef old Joe
hain’t come upon queer game this time. Two sick young-
sters —an’ ef they ain't a-starving! Here, you young uns,
eat some uv this ’ere, and give an account uv yourselves.”

With these words, he drew from a leather pouch at his
side, a couple of crackers.

The children clutched at them frantically.

“Hold up! Not so sharp!” he said; “you must have a
little at a time for an hour yet. Here, sis, give me the
little one —I ‘Il feed him; and as for you, jest see that
you don’t more ’n wibble 1”

“Oh, give me a drink!” cried Winnie, swallowing the
cracker in two bites, and for an instant even forgetting
Nat.

The man pulled a canteen or flat thin flask from his belt ”
and gave her a swallow of water; then he hastened to
‘moisten Nat’s lips and feed him crumb after crumb of
the broken cracker.

“Another day,” he muttered to himself, as he gently fed
the boy and smoothed back the tangled yellow hair from
the pale little face-—* another day, and he ’d ’a’ been past.

 

mendin’.”

Winnie looked up quickly.

“Ts he going to die ?” she asked.

“Not he,” said the man; “he ’1l come through right end
up yet. He’s got a fever on him, but we ll soon knock
that under. How ’d you get here, little gal ?”

Winnie told her story, all the while feeling a glad cer-
tainty at her heart that their troubles were over.

The strange man carried a gun, and he had a big pistol,