“More, more; for God’s sake, more!”

Dick filled it again, and again it was emptied.

“More—­more—­I’m burning—­more!”

The boy was cruelly perplexed.  He remembered vaguely hearing that fever should be starved; that the thing craved was the dangerous thing; and he moved away in a sort of compunctious terror.

“More—­more!  Oh, in the name of God, more!”

The words came gaspingly.  Dick thought of the death-rattle he had heard in Acredale when old man Nagle, the madman, died.  He dared not give more water, but he gathered leaves from the aromatic bushes and pressed them to the fevered lips.  Before he could withdraw them, the eager jaws closed upon the balsamic shrub.  They answered the purpose better than the most scientific remedy in the pharmacopoeia, for the patient called for no further drink, and presently fell into profound and undisturbed sleep.  Again the boy was alone with the daunting forces of the dark in its grimmest and most terrifying mood.  Alone!  No; his mind was now taken from all thought of self.  He was with a fellow-townsman.  The man had mentioned Boone; had referred to deeds that he had heard all his life associated with the father he had never seen.  A wild thought flashed upon him.  Was the collapsed body at his feet his father’s?  He could not see any resemblance in the dark, handsome face to the portrait at home, though all through the flight from Richmond something in the man’s manner had seemed like a memory.  He strove to recall the image his young mind had cherished, the personality he had heard whispered about in the gossiping groups of Acredale.  This was not the gay, the brilliant, the fascinating bon viveur who had been the life of society from Warchester to Bucephalo, from Pentica to New York.  Ah! what were the mystic terrors of the night, what the oppressive surroundings of this charnel-house of Nature, to the awful spectacle of this unmanned mind, this delirious echo of past guilt, past cowardice, past shame?

To lessen the somber gloom, Dick had lighted many torches and set them about the high mound where the sleeper lay in a huddle.  Taking little heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak.  As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by a vivacious cracking.  He looked up.  Lines of fire were darting thither and yon, where dry wood, the debris of years of decay, had been caught in the thick clumps of underbrush and among the limbs of the trees.  The fire had pushed briskly, and the uncanny glade was now an amphitheatre of crawling flames, stretching in many-colored banners in a vast circle about the point of refuge.  Dick gazed fascinated, with no thought of danger.  His spirits rose.  It was something like life—­this gorgeous decoration of fire.  How beautiful it was!  How it brought out the shining lines of