moving on, blindly, at random, conscious only of the necessity of
motion. Where the underbrush halted him he sheered off into the open
timber, feeling his way, falling sometimes, lying where he fell for a
while till the scourge of necessity lashed him into motion again.

About midnight the rain increased to a deluge, slackened fitfully, and
died out in a light rattle of thunder; star after star broke out through
the dainty vapours overhead; the trees sighed and grew quiet. For a
while drumming drops from the branches filled the silence with a musical
tattoo, then there remained no sound save, far away in the darkness, the
muffled roar of some brook, brimming bank-high with the April rain. And
Hamil, soaked, exhausted, and believing he could sleep, went back to the
house. Toward morning sleep came.

He awoke restless and depressed; and the next morning he was not well;
and not quite as well the next, remaining in his room with a headache,
pestered by Portlaw and retinues of servants bearing delicacies on
trays.

He had developed a cold, not a very bad one, and on the third day he
resumed his duties in the woods with Phelps and Baker, the surveyors,
and young Hastings.

The dull, stupid physical depression hung on to him; so did his cold;
and he found breathing difficult at night. The weather had turned very
raw and harsh, culminating in a flurry of snow.

Then one morning he appeared at breakfast looking so ghastly that
Portlaw became alarmed. It seemed to be rather late for that; Hamil's
face was already turning a dreadful bluish white under his host's
astonished gaze, and as the first chill seized him he rose from the
table, reeling.

"I--I am sorry, Portlaw," he tried to say.

"What on earth have you got?" asked Portlaw in a panic; but Hamil could
not speak.

They got him to the gardener's cottage as a precautionary measure, and
telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride's Fall for a
doctor. Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally
irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the
fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration. That is one way that
pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work
of a young, healthy, and care-free man. There was not much chance for
him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen
tanks arrived.

Portlaw, profoundly shocked and still too stunned by the swiftness of
the calamity to credit