'"
"How long did he stay with you?" I asked.
"About ten days, but the last three he was himself again, only too weak
to move. He thought he was cured except for weakness."
"Do you know how he had been spending the last two days or so before he
got down to your hut?"
I said two days, because this was the time I supposed he would take to
descend the river.
"I should say drinking all the time. He said he had fallen off his horse
two or three times, till he took to leading him. If he had had any other
horse than old Doctor he would have been a dead man. Bless you, I have
known that horse ever since he was foaled, and I never saw one like him
for sense. He would pick fords better than that gentleman could, I know,
and if the gentleman fell off him he would just stay stock still. He was
badly bruised, poor man, when he got here. I saw him through the gorge
when he left me, and he gave me a sovereign; he said he had only one
other left to take him down to the port, or he would have made it more."
"He was my father," said I, "and he is dead, but before he died he told
me to give you five pounds which I have brought you. I think you are
wrong in saying that he had been drinking."
"That is what they all say; but I take it very kind of him to have
thought of me."
My father's illness for the first three weeks after his return played
with him as a cat plays with a mouse; now and again it would let him have
a day or two's run, during which he was so cheerful and unclouded that
his doctor was quite hopeful about him.
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