nd a numb feeling of pleasure
when it grew steeper and rougher. He had left the trail long since, but
he was stayed by no obstacle, was arrested by no barrier of Nature's
make. A lizard asleep on a tiny ledge of rock, jutting from a cliff,
scuttled away in fright as a man in sudden onslaught scaled its face. A
pair of cotton-tails bobbed from one thicket to another in wildest
terror as he came breaking through. A trout, floating in a rocky basin
of the brook, fled with a dexterous flip of fin and tail to the
protecting shelter of an overhanging root, as the placid pool was
agitated by the passage of an enemy, following the course of the stream
as the path of least resistance.

To all these sights and sounds Friedrich was blind and deaf. He spoke
no word. It was as if he were deprived of every power but that of
motion. He plunged on like a man of old pursued by the Erinyes.

Though he was unconscious of fatigue, the mad pace began to tell on
him, and his muscles cried for quarter. At such times he rushed either
to the right or left, going along the side of the mountain until he
found an easier upward passage, but always ascending, never turning
down the slope; always fleeing from the pursuing wretchedness; always
subtly conscious of the futility of flight.

So mounts a small bird into the air, pursued by a hawk. Higher and
higher he flies, straight up into the blue, hoping that the wind may
blow him far beyond his pursuer's reach, believing that the light
atmosphere that suffices to support his frail body may be too tenuous
to uphold his heavier enemy. Hoping thus and believing; but realizing
at last the unequal contests between their strengths, the failing of
his own force, the fateful, certain, deadly approach of the antagonist
whose power it is useless to oppose.

One above the other two shelves of rock arose, like two steps of a
giant's staircase. Friedrich's exhausted body sank upon the moss of the
upper, and the bracken and small shrubs closed over him, as if to
shield him in their gentle embrace from the trouble that had driven him
to their care. He lay on his back, staring with unseeing eyes at the
tree-leaves far above his head, black against the sky's purple.

His mind seemed to be exhausted with his body. It moved with painful
slowness, and groped vaguely after the things of memory.

Was it yesterday--when was it that he had seen Sydney moving about in
the yellow firelight? Had he not--yes, he was sure h