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After an all too brief burst of sunshine, the Land of Storms again justified its name. Giant clouds came rolling in from seaward. The mountains were lost in mist; the glaciers became sullen, rock-strewn masses of white-brown ice; the fresh greenery of the forests faded into somber belts of blackness.
But the dream-face did not fade, the dream-eyes gazed softly into his, the dream-lips moved, and the low sound of the dream-voice was music to his ears. "You are sick," the voice said; "you are in pain." Bill's throat was dry with a burning thirst. "Water!" he gasped, and the word rasped harsh. The girl reached into the shadows and a tiny white-brown hand appeared holding a dripping tin cup.
She bent closer and the next instant the man's burning cheek was pillowed against the soft coolness of her bared arm and his head was raised from the blanket while the tiny white-brown hand held the tin cup to his lips. With the life-giving draft the man's brain cleared and he smiled into the eyes of his dream-girl.
Balanced above the phlox, a humming-bird, green-backed and glittering, hung and tasted for a moment, then flashed to where the larkspurs were. A red-headed woodpecker swung downward on the wing to the white-brown side of a dead elm, sounded a brief tattoo upon the surface, then dived at a passing insect. A phoebe bird was singing somewhere.
The girl was pointing excitedly with a tapering white-brown finger to the fork of a great log where, caught on a sharp limb stub, was the striped sleeve of a mackinaw, from the end of which protruded a hand, while after the log, trailing sluggishly in the V of the fork, was the lifeless body of a man. As she looked a light of exultation gleamed in the sharp old eyes. Here was vengeance!
Happiness!" he repeated dully, with bowed head. "For me there can be no happiness." With a low cry the girl was at his side and two tiny, white-brown hands clutched at the fringed arm of his buckskin shirt. The beautiful face was flushed, the bosom heaved, and from between the red lips poured a torrent of words: "You shall find happiness! You, who are great and strong and brave above all men!
In the silence, a little white-brown hand strayed over his face and rested with delicious coolness upon the fevered brow. Bill's eyes closed and for blissful eons he lay, while in all the world was no such thing as pain only the sweet, restful peace of Dreamland.
At such times the heart cannot lie, and the lips speak the truth." She leaned closer, and unconsciously a slender, white-brown hand fell upon his, and the soft, tapering fingers closed upon his own. A delicious thrill passed through his body at the touch.
Three old elbow-chairs, some rickety stools, a writing-table, on which were two or three volumes of music, some dried plants laid on white-brown paper; beside the table stood an old spinet, and, close to the latter article of furniture, sat a fat and well-looking cat.
"We must lose no more time now, mates," said Ned Gale, as we climbed up the bank. "We must get some way inland before daylight, and then stow ourselves away in a wood till we have time to look about us. We must keep clear of all cottages, for the white-brown fellows hereabouts would make no bones of selling us to the Dons, if they thought they could get anything for us.
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