ped and lifted
him up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to
cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his
ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the
faithful terrier following. "Druse--Fleda!" They were the words of one
who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and
then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness.

"Fleda! Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a
quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who
knew that the feet of Fate were at her threshold.

CHAPTER XX. TWO LIFE PIECES

"It's a fine day."

"Yes, it's beautiful."

Fleda wanted to ask how he knew, but hesitated from feelings of
delicacy. Ingolby seemed to understand. A faint reflection of the old
whimsical smile touched his lips, and his hands swept over the coverlet
as though smoothing out a wrinkled map.

"The blind man gets new senses," he said dreamily. "I feel things where
I used to see them. How did I know it was a fine day? Simple enough.
When the door opened there was only the lightest breath of wind, and the
air was fresh and crisp, and I could smell the sun. One sense less, more
degree of power to the other senses. The sun warms the air, gives it a
flavour, and between it and the light frost, which showed that it was
dry outside, I got the smell of a fine Fall day. Also, I heard the cry
of the wild fowl going South, and they wouldn't have made a sound if
it hadn't been a fine day. And also, and likewise, and besides, and
howsomever, I heard Jim singing, and that nigger never sings in bad
weather. Jim's a fair-weather raven, and this morning he was singing
like a 'lav'rock in the glen.'"

Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a storm of emotion swept
over her face.

His cheerfulness, his boylike simplicity, his indomitable spirit, which
had survived so much, and must still face so much, his almost childlike
ways, and the naive description of a blind man's perception, waked in
her an almost intolerable yearning. It was not the yearning of a maid
for a man. It was the uncontrollable woman in her, the mother-thing,
belonging to the first woman that ever was-protection of the weak,
hovering love for the suffering, the ministering spirit.

Since Ingolby had been brought to the house in the pines, Madame Bulteel
and herself, with Jim, had nursed him through the Valley of the Shad