And, too, he perceived that the world would see something

grimly humorous in his insistence on the girl's parentage, when all the

time, in the home to which he was to bring her, dwelt these unlovable,

snobbish old parents of his own. So he laughed. And he thought of how

he had been fooled, and played with, and duped, and cheated, and all

but disgraced by the very people on whom he had looked down from a

fancied superiority. And so he laughed. And as he laughed his hands

swelled up to the size of pillows, and he thought that he was dressed

in a loose garment spotted all over with great spots, and that he was

standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came

in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row

sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was

revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make

the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and

over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray

bird-notes through a rattle of drums.

"I have no fresh motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her,

"no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright

pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor

poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, yet dare beg at

the castle gate for a crumb of my lady's bounty." At which he would

have wept, but could only laugh louder and louder.

Then dimly he knew again he was in his own room, and he felt that

several people were moving back and forth quickly. He tried to rise,

but could not, and he knew that he was slipping back to the hall and

the solemn crowd of men. He did not want to go. He grasped convulsively

at the blanket with his sound hand, and shrieked aloud.

"I am sick! I am sick! I am sick!" he cried louder and louder.

Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled

contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them

still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer

skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices

spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various

things.

"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped

it so long."

Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was

hurried back into the land of visions.




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