I'm too weak to walk."
"Of course I'm coming in," blurted Con, indignantly. "Why, man, you're
dead sick!"
"Don't!" choked the man; "oh, boy, don't come near me, _I've got
smallpox_."
For one brief second Con stood, stiff with horror. "Who's with you,
helping you, nursing you?" he demanded.
"No one, I'm alone, alone; oh! water, water," moaned the man.
Con flung open the door. There was no hesitation, no fear, no thought of
self; just a great human pity in his fair young face, and a wonderful
tenderness in his strong young arms as he lifted the loathsome sufferer
from the floor where he had fallen in his weakness, after crawling to
the window in that last, almost hopeless effort to call assistance.
On the soiled and tumbled bed he laid the man, who still shrieked: "Go
away, go away, you're crazy to come in here!" Then without a word of
even kindly encouragement the boy seized a bucket and dashed down to
the creek. "It's water, not words, he wants now," he said to himself,
running back, and in another moment his good right arm was slipping
under the sick man's shoulders, and he was lifting him up and holding
to the fever-cracked lips a cup of gloriously cold water.
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