While Helmsley was examining it, it ceased whining, and gently licked his hand.

Seeing a trickling stream of water making its way through the moss and ferns close by, he bathed the little dog's wounded paw carefully and tied it up with a strip of material torn from his own coat sleeve.
"So you want to be taken care of, do you, Charlie!" he said, patting the tiny head.

"That's what a good many of us want, when we feel hurt and broken by the hard ways of the world!" Charlie blinked a dark eye, cocked a small soft ear, and ventured on another caress of the kind human hand with his warm little tongue.

"Well, I won't leave you to starve in the woods, or trust you to the tender mercies of the police,--you shall come along with me! And if I see any advertisement of your loss I'll perhaps take you back to your owner.

But in the meantime we'll stay together." Charlie evidently agreed to this proposition, for when Helmsley tucked him cosily under his arm, he settled down comfortably as though well accustomed to the position.