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he asked suddenly. Norah shook her head mournfully. "He didn't know anyone," she answered, "only asked for water and said things I couldn't understand. Then when Dad came he knew him at once, but the Hermit didn't seem even to know that Dad was there." "Did he look very bad?" "Yes--pretty bad," said Norah, hating to hurt him. "He was terribly flushed, and oh! his poor eyes were awful, so burning and sunken. And--oh!--let's canter, Mr. Stephenson, please!" This time there was no objection. Banker jumped at the quick touch of the spur as Stephenson's heel went home. Side by side they cantered steadily until Norah pulled her pony in at length at the entrance to the timber, where the creek swung into Anglers' Bend. "We're nearly there," she said. But to the man watching in the Hermit's camp the hours were long indeed. The Hermit was too weak to struggle much. There had been a few sharp paroxysms of delirium, such as Norah had seen, during which David Linton had been forced to hold the old man down with unwilling force. But the struggles soon brought their own result of helpless weakness, and the Hermit subsided into restless unconsciousness, broken by feeble mutterings, of which few coherent words could be caught. "Dick" was frequently on the fevered lips. Once he smiled suddenly, and Mr. Linton, bending down, heard a faint whisper of "Norah." Sitting beside his old friend in the lonely silence of the bush, he studied the ravages time and sorrow had wrought in the features be knew. Greatly changed as Jim Stephenson was, his face lined and sunken, and his beard long and white as snow, it was still, to David Linton, the friend of his boyhood come back from the grave and from his burden of unmerited disgrace. The frank blue eyes were as brave as ever; they met his with no light of recognition, but with their clear gaze undimmed. A sob rose in the strong man's throat--if he could but see again that welcoming light!--hear once more his name on his friend's lips! If he were not too late! The Hermit muttered and tossed on his narrow bed. The watcher's thoughts fled to the little messenger galloping over the long miles of lonely country--his motherless girl, whom he had sent on a mission that might so easily spell disaster. Horrible thoughts came into the father's mind. He pictured Bobs putting his hoof into a hidden crab-hole--falling--Norah lying white and motionless, perhaps far from the track. That was not
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