Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/54



R. LAW had endured even more than a weathered woodsman could have borne without suffering. Forty-eight hours of such heavy woods-walking as he had put in to escape the fire would have served to prostrate almost any man; add to this (ignoring a dozen other mental, nervous, and physical strains) the fact that he had been half-drowned. …. He experienced fever, delirium, then blank slumbers of exhaustion.

He awoke at night, unaware that thirty-six hours had passed since his fall. This last, however, and events that had gone before, he recalled with tolerable clearness. Other memories, more vague, of gentle hands, of a face by turns an angel's and a dear woman's, troubled him even less materially. He was sane enough to know he had been out of his head, and since it seemed he had been saved and cared for, he found no reason to quarrel with present circumstances.

With some difficulty, from a dry throat, he whispered: "Water …" 34