ell, utterly
exhausted, and for a moment no one noticed his absence.

Then the boss of the camp looked back and saw him lying motionless in
his tracks. Already the camp had gone down under the torrent, and the
flood was about to lick up the prostrate figure; but the boss turned
back with tremendous bounds, swung Gillsey over his shoulder like a sack
of oats, and staggered up the slope, as the water swelled, with a
sobbing moan, from his ankles to his knees.

Seeing the situation of the boss, several more of the hands, who had
climbed to a level of safety, rushed to the rescue. They seized him and
his burden, while others formed a chain, laying hold of hands. With a
shout the whole gang surged up the hill,--and the river saw its prey
dragged out of its very teeth.

After a rest of a few moments, Gillsey quite recovered, and began most
abject apologies for not getting to camp sooner, so as to give the boys
time to save something.

The demonstrative hand-shakings and praises and gratitude of the men
whom he had snatched from a frightful death seemed to confuse him. He
took it at first for chaff, and said, humbly, that "Bein' as sis wanted
him to git thar in time, he'd did his best." But at length it dawned
upon him that his comrades regarded him as a man, as a hero, who had
done a really splendid and noble thing. He began to feel their gratitude
and their respect.

Then it seemed as if a transformation was worked upon the poor cringing
fellow, and he began to believe in himself. A new, firmer, manlier light
woke in his eye, and he held himself erect. He presently began to move
about among the woodsmen as their equal, and their enduring gratitude
gave his new self-confidence time to ripen. From that day Simon Gillsey
stood on a higher plane. In that one act of heroism he had found his
slumbering manhood.

In the Accident Ward.

The grass was gray, of a strange and dreadful pallor, but long and soft.
Unbroken, and bending all one way, as if to look at something, it
covered the wide, low, rounded hill that rose before me. Over the hill
the sky hung close, gray and thick, with the color of a parched
interminable twilight. Dew or a drop of rain could not be thought of as
coming from such a sky.

Along the base of the low hill ran a red road of baked clay, blood red,
and beaten with nameless and innumerable feet. I stood in the middle of
this road and prepared to ascend the hill obliquely by a narrow
footpath,