Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/53

 After a while Jamie arose to his feet and laid out his course still west by south. The honest hunger that had been in the pit of his stomach an hour before was replaced by a flat nausea and he had not gone far when he found a cold perspiration beginning to break out in his palms, at his temples, on his body. He did not even look up at the sky to decide whether he would voice an appeal or not. He deliberately walked in all the sunshine he could find because, from a taste of night out of doors, he thought he would need all the stored warmth he could accumulate.

At his last resting place he took all the change from his pocket and carefully divided it. He might reach a town where for fifty cents at some cheapest of lodgings he could hire a bed. What remained would have to be equally divided between supper and breakfast. After that he was at the mercy of the world again, and at that minute he was feeling that the world might very possibly be quite as much against him as it was for him. The one consolation upon which he could rest was that if a call had been sent out from the hospital and descriptions of him had been posted, thanks to the bandit, he was so changed that no one would feel that he was the man who answered the descriptions that would be given. So Jamie followed his program me until after breakfast the next morning, and then, with only a few cents left, still headed west by south, he stumbled on. He realized that he was almost at the limit of endurance. Persistent walking had tired his feet and legs until they were beginning to swell so that his shoes were feeling too small. The sun had beaten on his