ious potion
containing rest, and presently, as I sat by his side in the gray
twilight, he fell into a deep sleep--a sleep, alas! of fire and wandering
talk. It was pitiful to hear him, poor fellow--living over again in
dreams the road we had travelled, or making pictures of the road he
still dreamed ahead of us. Never before had I realized how entirely his
soul was the soul of a painter--all pictures and colour.

"O my God!" he would suddenly exclaim, "did you ever see such blue in
your life!" and then again, evidently referring to some particularly
attractive effect in the phantasmagoria of his fever, "it's no use--you
must let me stop and have a shot to get that, before it goes."

One place that seemed particularly to haunt him was--Mauch Chunk. He had
been there before, and, as we had walked along, had often talked
enthusiastically of it. "Wait till we get to Mauch Chunk," he said; "then
the real fun will begin." And now, over and over again, he kept making
pictures of Mauch Chunk, till I could have cried.

"Dramatic black rocks," he would murmur, "water rushing from the hills
in every direction--clean-cut, vivid scenery--like theatres--the road
runs by the side of a steel-blue river at the bottom of a chasm, and
there is hardly room for it--the houses cling to the hillside like
swallows' nests--here and there patches of fresh green grass gleam among
the rocks, and, high up in the air on some dizzy ledge, there is a wild
apple-tree in blossom--it is all black rocks and springs and moss and
tumbling water--"

Then again his soul was evidently walking in the Blue Mountains, and
several times he repeated a phrase of mine that had taken his fancy: "And
now for the spacious corridors of the Highlands, and the lordly gates of
the Hudson."

Then he would suddenly half awaken and turn to me, realizing the
truth, and say:

"O our beautiful journey--to end like this!" and fall asleep again.

And once more I fell to thinking of fairy springs by the roadside, and
apples falling innocently from the bough, and how the beautiful journey
we call life might some day suddenly end like this, with half the
beautiful road untravelled--the rest sleep and perchance dreams.

* * * * *

But Colin did not die. He is once more painting out in the sun, and next
year we plan to stand again on that very spot by the Susquehanna, and
watch the shadows of great fishes gliding through the dreamy water, and
th