So he got on the packet Isaac Shelby, and was soon shaking with a chill that showed how thoroughly malaria had pervaded his system.  His very bones seemed frozen.  But if you ever shook with such a chill, or rather if you were ever shaken by such a chill, taking hold of you like a demoniacal possession; if you ever felt your brain congealing, your icy bones breaking, your frosty heart becoming paralyzed, with a cold no fire could reach, you know what it is; and if you have not felt it, no words of mine can make you understand the sensations.  After the chill came the period when August felt himself between two parts of Milton’s hell, between a sea of ice and a sea of fire; sometimes the hot wave scorched him, then it retired again before the icy one.  At last it was all hot, and the boiling blood scalded his palms and steamed to his brain, bewildering his thoughts and almost blinding his eyes.  He had determined when he started to get off at a wood-yard three miles below Andrew’s castle, to avoid observation and the chance of arrest; and now in his delirium the purpose as he had planned it remained fixed.  He got up at two o’clock, crazed with fever, dressed himself, and went out into the rainy night.  He went ashore in the mud and bushes, and, guided more by instinct than by any conscious thought, he started up the wagon-track along the river bank.  His furious fever drove him on, talking to himself, and splashing recklessly into the pools of rain-water standing in the road.  He never remembered his debarkation.  He must have fallen once or twice, for he was covered with mud when he rang the alarm at the castle.  In answer to Andrew’s “Who’s there?” he answered, “You’ll have to send a harder rain than that if you want to put this fire out!”

And so, what with the original disease, the mental discouragement, and the exposure to the rain, the fever had well-nigh consumed the life, and now that the waves of the hot sea after days of fire and nights of delirium had gone back, there was hardly any life left in the body, and the doctors said there was no hope.  One consuming desire remained.  He wanted to see Julia once before he went away; and that one desire it seemed impossible to gratify.  When he learned of the failure of Jonas to get any message to Julia through Cynthy, he had felt the keenest disappointment, and had evidently been sinking since the hope that kept him up had been taken away.

The mother sat by his bed, Gottlieb sat stupefied at the foot, with Jonas by his side, and Wilhelmina was crying in a still fashion in one corner of the room.  August lay breathing feebly, and with his life evidently ebbing.

“August!” said Andrew, as he stood over his bed, having come to announce the arrival of Julia.  “August!” Andrew tried to speak quietly, but there was a something of hope in the inflection, a tremor of eagerness in the utterance, that made the mother look up quickly and inquiringly.

August opened his eyes slowly and looked into the face of the Philosopher.  Then he slowly closed his eyes again, and a something, not a smile—­he was too weak for that—­but a look of infinite content, spread over his wan face.