that he knew no swaling could account for it, and, standing up, he took
his bearings and decided that it must be either Farmer Angwin's
buildings or ricks ablaze. Angwin was a shiftless fellow, gentle and
meek, who was wont to bewail his ill-luck; here was another slice of it
for him, poor man! Ishmael was too far from home to return quickly for a
trap, and it would take time to put the horse in. Suddenly he decided he
would make the run on foot across country, as he often had as a boy on
seeing that ominous but thrilling glow gathering in the sky. He got to
his feet, nimbly enough if not with suppleness; as he did so he felt a
twinge in his thigh such as it had been subject to ever since a bad
attack of rheumatism the winter before. He stood a moment watching the
rising glow, then stretched himself. Unconsciously he was asking of
limbs and muscles as to their fitness; as he drew in deep breaths of the
soft air and let the tautened sinews relax again there was no alien note
in the symphony of his being--all felt as sound and strong as ever; now
he was standing the twinge did not bother him--he told himself that in
every inch of him he was still the man he was. Yet he knew he no longer
felt the twang of some divine-strung cord within that had been wont to
thrill and inform the whole.

Quite suddenly, as he stood, there came to him the idea to try and see
whether by physical abandon he could recapture the old frenzy, whether
to the bidding of violent exercise and healthy exhaustion, to the joy
of feeling covered with sweat and earth, a mere glowing animal who feels
and does not think, something of what he had lost would come back to him
if only for an hour.

CHAPTER III

BODIES OF FIRE

The dusk was deepening rapidly, that glow brightened every minute;
Ishmael began to run. He ran on and on--it seemed to him
effortlessly--and with a tingling glow rising in him that made him feel
alive as he had not for long. On and on, straight as keeping that glow
ahead could make his course, over the hedges, damp and clinging with
dew, scattering its drops, breaking the clinging grass stems and the
tangled weeds. At each wall he felt the old upleaping of power as he
took it, hurling himself over cleanly in the darkness, delightfully
regardless of what might be on the other side. Down marshy fields that
sucked at his feet, through the pools that splashed up into his heated
face, over the clumps of long grass that grew betwe