t what all the hubbub could be
about. Tom incontinently bore down on these, and dashing in among them
was soon up to his neck in water!

He remained quiet for a few minutes and deep silence pervaded the scene.
Then the water began to feel chill. The wretched man crept out and,
remembering his errand, resumed his rapid journey. Soon the fever
burned again with intensified violence, and the power of connected
thought began to depart from its victim altogether.

While in this condition Tom Brixton wandered aimlessly about, sometimes
walking smartly for a mile or so, at other times sauntering slowly, as
if he had no particular object in view, and occasionally breaking into a
run at full speed, which usually ended in his falling exhausted on the
ground.

At last, as darkness began to overspread the land, he became so worn-out
that he flung himself down under a tree, with a hazy impression on his
mind that it was time to encamp for the night. The fever was fierce and
rapid in its action. First it bereft him of reason and then left him
prostrate, without the power to move a limb except with the greatest
difficulty.

It was about the hour of noon when his reasoning powers returned, and,
strange to say, the first conscious act of his mind was to recall the
words "_twice bought_," showing that the thought had been powerfully
impressed on him before delirium set in. What he had said or done
during his ravings he knew not, for memory was a blank, and no human
friend had been there to behold or listen. At that time, however, Tom
did not think very deeply about these words, or, indeed, about anything
else. His prostration was so great that he did not care at first to
follow out any line of thought or to move a limb. A sensation of
absolute rest and total indifference seemed to enchain all his
faculties. He did not even know where he was, and did not care, but lay
perfectly still, gazing up through the overhanging branches into the
bright blue sky, sometimes dozing off into a sleep that almost resembled
death, from which he awoke gently, to wonder, perhaps, in an idle way,
what had come over him, and then ceasing to wonder before the thought
had become well defined.

The first thing that roused him from this condition was a passing
thought of Betty Bevan. He experienced something like a slight shock,
and the blood which had begun to stagnate received a new though feeble
impulse at its fountain-head, the heart. Under