ck!" he cried louder and louder.

Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled
contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them
still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer
skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices
spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various
things.

"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped
it so long."

Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was
hurried back into the land of visions.

CHAPTER XXII

FLOWER O' THE WORLD

Bennington de Laney found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening
with closed eyes to a number of sounds. Of these there most impressed
him two. They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at
intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic
clicks, softened somewhat by distance. After a time it occurred to him
to open his eyes. At once he noticed two things more--that he had some
way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a little table
near the foot of his bunk stood a vase of flowers. These two new
impressions satisfied him for some time. He brooded over them slowly,
for his brain was weak. Then he allowed his gaze to wander to the
window. From above its upper sash depended two long white curtains of
some lacelike material, freshly starched and with deep edges, ruffled
slightly in a pleasing fashion. They stirred slowly in the warm air
from the window. Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with
pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds. The
clinking noises came through the open window. He knew now that they
meant the impact of sledge on drill. Some one was drilling somewhere.
His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking
chair swaying softly to and fro, and reading a book, the turning of
whose leaves had caused the rustling of paper which he had noticed
first.

For a long time he lay silent and contented. Her fine brown hair had
been drawn back smoothly away from her forehead into a loose knot. She
was dressed in a simple gown of white--soft, and resting on the curves
of her slender figure as lightly as down on the surface of the warm
meadows. From beneath the full skirt peeped a little slippered foot,
which tapped the floor rhythmically as the chair rocked to and fro.
Finally she glanced up and di