“I woke in the cool of the evening.  The fresh wind off the river was like the breath of life, and Pedro’s face, thrust close to mine, no longer grew large and small by fits.  I noticed that it was quite gray, and that his lips twitched as he muttered, ‘Senor, Senor—­’

“I said:  ‘Where is the Senor Scott?’

“’He woke a little while ago, and called for water to wash in, and a clean coat, and he used the hair-brush.  Then he took the little tin box and went out—­went out.’

“I got to my feet, threw an arm over Pedro’s shoulder, and he ran with me out into the moonlit street.  The track to the fountain lay like a ribbon of silver, and the houses were like silver blocks.  And every house was shuttered and silent—­breathless.  Not a man lounged under the shade of the walls, not a girl went late to draw water, not a dog barked.  The little place was deserted in the hold of the forest.  It lay like a lonely, luminous raft, in the midst of a black sea.  Only ahead of me a man stumbled slowly in the center of the road, and his shadow staggered beside him.  I have said there was no other living thing visible.  Yet, as this man stumbled past the shuttered houses the very blades of grass, the very leaves on the wall, seemed to have conscious life and to be aware of him.  When the wind moved the trees, every branch seemed to be straining to follow him as Pedro and I followed.

“We followed, but we could not gain on him.  It was like the dreams of delirium.  Pedro and I seemed to be struggling through the silence of Herares as if it were something heavy and resistant, and Scott reeled from side to side, but always kept the same distance ahead.  We were still behind when we turned into Henkel’s garden, and the scent of the flowers beat in our faces like heat.  At the veranda steps we met the servant who had admitted Scott.

“The man was running away.  He was a cripple, and he came down the steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone.  Somewhere a door clashed open.  There was no other sound.  But in a moment the garden seemed, full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged.  They melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they took no notice of us.  I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly.  But when a light flared up in one of the rooms it showed no more than Scott talking with Henkel.

“They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was of dark leaves about the window, which was open.  I leaned against the side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as if he were at a cockfight.  I did not know just why I was there.  Henkel sat at a table, wagging his head backward and forward; Scott was sitting opposite him.  And he looked as Lazarus might have looked when first he heard the Voice and stirred.

“Henkel was saying, ’Dear me, dear me, but why should this have happened?’ And Scott answered as he had answered me, in that strange, patient voice: