No doubt he was right.  Indeed it was because Mr. Cathie and his doctor saw that he was out of health and in urgent need of change, that they left off opposing his wish to travel.  There is no use, however, in talking about this now.

I never got from him how he managed to reach the shepherd’s hut, but I learned some little from the shepherd, when I stayed with him both on going towards Erewhon, and on returning.

“He did not seem to have drink in him,” said the shepherd, “when he first came here; but he must have been pretty full of it, or he must have had some bottles in his saddle-bags; for he was awful when he came back.  He had got them worse than any man I ever saw, only that he was not awkward.  He said there was a bird flying out of a giant’s mouth and laughing at him, and he kept muttering about a blue pool, and hanky-panky of all sorts, and he said he knew it was all hanky-panky, at least I thought he said so, but it was no use trying to follow him, for it was all nothing but horrors.  He said I was to stop the people from trying to worship him.  Then he said the sky opened and he could see the angels going about and singing ‘Hallelujah.’”

“How long did he stay with you?” I asked.

“About ten days, but the last three he was himself again, only too weak to move.  He thought he was cured except for weakness.”

“Do you know how he had been spending the last two days or so before he got down to your hut?”

I said two days, because this was the time I supposed he would take to descend the river.

“I should say drinking all the time.  He said he had fallen off his horse two or three times, till he took to leading him.  If he had had any other horse than old Doctor he would have been a dead man.  Bless you, I have known that horse ever since he was foaled, and I never saw one like him for sense.  He would pick fords better than that gentleman could, I know, and if the gentleman fell off him he would just stay stock still.  He was badly bruised, poor man, when he got here.  I saw him through the gorge when he left me, and he gave me a sovereign; he said he had only one other left to take him down to the port, or he would have made it more.”

“He was my father,” said I, “and he is dead, but before he died he told me to give you five pounds which I have brought you.  I think you are wrong in saying that he had been drinking.”

“That is what they all say; but I take it very kind of him to have thought of me.”

My father’s illness for the first three weeks after his return played with him as a cat plays with a mouse; now and again it would let him have a day or two’s run, during which he was so cheerful and unclouded that his doctor was quite hopeful about him.  At various times on these occasions I got from him that when he left the shepherd’s hut, he thought his illness had run itself out, and that he should now reach the port from which he was to sail for S. Francisco without misadventure.  This he did, and he was able to do all he had to do at the port, though frequently attacked with passing fits of giddiness.  I need not dwell upon his voyage to S. Francisco, and thence home; it is enough to say that he was able to travel by himself in spite of gradually, but continually, increasing failure.