stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
it.... Then sleep took him....

III

Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
between the splash and murmur of the little waves.

And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...

Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
sound of weeping; Defago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
against his mouth to stifle it.

And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
pitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruel
wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
and his blood ran cold.

"Defago," he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to make
his voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no reply,
but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
him. The body did not stir.

"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
sleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
body back again, for fear of waking him.

One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
for several minutes there came no reply, nor