ome sort of stuff between him and
the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was
always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when
the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did
not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion
was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan.

The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open
doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of
the men met.

"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not
speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not
misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then
reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick.
"You think you are among some Yankee defal_ca_tor?" he asked, for sole
resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have
imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick
man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay
across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?"

Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the
thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the
pouch of the belt.

"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you
see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?"

Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills
made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me."

"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud
air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly
confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call.

Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he
could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the
air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern
land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare
hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an
illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its
first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales
sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of
his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by
that time. It was then