hen he rose at last, night had wrapped the thick woods in
its black mantle, and he was no longer conscious of direction, or of
purpose, or of self. He stumbled along dazedly, trying to recall the
purpose that had taken him into the woods.

The paroxysms passed. The fever had reached a consistent high level,
lending him a singular buoyancy of body and of spirit, but his reason
was gone. He walked faster and faster, his vision keen under the dark
canopy, his mind racing with disordered ideas, a kaleidoscope of long
displaced memories. Often he stopped short, puzzled, vainly striving
to stem the fugitive currents of conceits in his efforts to remember
what purpose had brought him here. His head throbbed. He kept step
with each pulsing ache--it seemed to help. He hurried on through the
night.

The way grew steeper, always he traveled up the ascent. Flooded with
the hot energy that swept through his arteries, each passing hour
seemed to add to the fires that fed his strength.

The gray beams of early dawn, filtering through a now taller vault of
forest, found him far up the slope and mounting still steeper grades.
He could not quite remember what his mission was ... something that
the Governor wanted, he thought, something he, too, wanted to do ...
or was it a Christmas present for Deane....

He climbed higher, laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a
log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to
offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later,
carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in
grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple
in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying
over the nature of his forgotten mission and hysterically impressed
with its importance.

The sun rose high overhead but it was twilight in the deep forest
through which he clambered, over decayed logs, through rank
overgrowth, past little streams of filthy water flowing in sullen
silence through channels overgrown with moss. No sounds of forest life
challenged the vast silence of the damp and cheerless vault of green,
no song of bird or shrill thrumming of insects that makes the tropical
forest a palpitant discordance during the hot hours of the day.

His laughter rang mockingly through the shadowed silence, the loud
vagaries of his delirium carried far tinder the overhang of tunneled
foliage.

"It's all right, Sears ... poor l