I did for him what I was able,--nursed him, kept him covered, watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough places of the road.

'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are like a son to me--like a son.' It is good to remember, though at the time it put me on the rack.

All was to no purpose.

Fast as we were travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to another destination.
Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent.

An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech, from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words of the _patois_, too: _Ouistreham_, _matrasse_, and others, the sense of which we were sometimes unable to guess.