after a period of turbulent mania. And
suddenly his heart was all pierced by grief and a sense of bereavement.
He had realized his friend was dead, and he felt that this might fairly
be considered the better fate. But somehow the trivial personal
belongings so bespoke the vanished presence that he yearned for Demere
in his happy release; the shaken nerves could respond to the echo of a
voice forever silenced; he could look into vacancy upon a face he was
destined to see never again. His jaded faculties, instead of reaching
forward to the terrible future, began to turn back vaguely to the
details of their long service together; as a reflex of the agitation he
had endured he could not, in the surcease of turmoil, compass a quiet
mind; he began to experience that poignant anguish of bereavement,
self-reproach. He remembered trifling differences they had had in the
life they lived here like brothers, and his own part in them gnawed in
his consciousness like a grief; he repented him of words long ago
forgiven; he thought of personal vexations that he might have sought to
smooth away but carelessly left in disregard; and when he lay down in
the darkness on the narrow camp-bed with his friend's pillow under his
head, Demere's look this morning, of affectionate banter, with which he
had turned on the ground as they lay in the bivouac was so present to
his mind that the tears which all his pains and griefs were powerless to
summon, sprang to his eyes.

But the weary physical being sunk to rest, and then in the midst of his
somnolent mental impressions was wrought a change. Demere was with him
still,--not in the guise of that white, stark face, upturned now to the
stars on the plains of Taliquo,--but in his serene, staid presence as he
lived; together they were at Fort Loudon, consulting, planning, as in
its happier days; now it was the capacity of the spring which they
wished to enlarge, and this they had done with blasting-powder; now it
was the device to add to the comfort of the garrison by framing the
little porches that stood before the doors of the barracks; now it was
the erection of an out-work on the side exposed to assault by the river,
and they were marking off the ravelin,--Corporal O'Flynn and a squad,
with the tapes,--and directing the fashioning of the gabions, the
Indians peacefully sitting by the while like some big, unintelligent,
woodland animals, while the great, basket-like frames were woven of
white oak sp