iny, unseen, living rods. Clark's forehead was damp with
a perspiration that physical pain could not have brought, and on De
Young's face, time marked those minutes as months.

It was all done with the habit of years. The two doctors carefully
sterilized their instruments and replaced them in cases, then,
silently, drawn nearer together than ever before, the two friends
watched the return of consciousness. And Morris awakening, things
real and of dreamland still confused to his senses, heard the soft
voice which a legion of patients had thus heard and blessed, saying
cheerily, "Wake up! wake up, my friend!"

Thus the day passed. In turn, the men, hours apart, with active
brains, and eyes wide open, sent their challenges to Death--each man
his own messenger.

The months slipped by. Suns became torrid hot, and cooled until it
seemed there was light but not heat on earth. Days grew longer, and in
unison, earth waxed greener; then in descending scale, both together
waned. Migratory wings fluttering at night, and passing voices calling
in the darkness--most lonely sounds of earth--gave place to singers of
the day. The robin, the meadow-lark, the ubiquitous catbird, all born
of prairie and of summer, came and went. Blackbirds in countless
flocks followed. Again the calling of prairie-chickens was heard at
eve and morning, and anon frost glistened in the air.

At last throughout the land no sound of animal voice was heard, for
winter bound all things firm and white. Another cycle was complete;
yet, almost ere the record could be made, there appeared, moving far
in the distance, a black triangle. Passing swiftly, with the sound of
wings and calling voices, there sprang anew in all things animate a
mixed feeling of gladness and unrest, which was the spirit of returned
spring.

Thus twice the cycle of the seasons passed, and again the sun of early
spring, shining bright, set the tiny snow-streams singing. It
glistened over the prairie on snow-drift and frost; it lit up the few
scattered shingled roofs of settlers newly come; and shone in at the
open door of a rough cabin we know, touching without pity the faces of
the two men who watched its rise. Shining low, even with the prairie,
it touched in vivid contrast an oblong mound of fresh earth, heaped up
target distance from the cabin door.

The mound had not been there long; neither snow or rain had yet
touched it; it was still strange to the men in the doorway, who saw it