and movement ceased. Then a great pause, and light streamed round him,
comforting him.

It seemed to him that he was lying helpless and still by falling water in
a valley. The water soothed him, and he fell asleep. After a long time
he waked, and dimly knew that a face, good to look at, was bending over
him. In a vague, far-off way he saw that it was Elise Malboir; but even
as he saw, his eyes closed, the world dropped away, and he sank to sleep
again.

It was no vision or delirium; for Elise had come. She had knelt beside
his bed, and given him drink, and smoothed his pillow; and once, when
no one was in the tent, she stooped and kissed his hot dark lips, and
whispered words that were not for his ears to hear, nor to be heard by
any one of this world. The good Cure found her there. He had not heart
to bid her go home, and he made it clear to the villagers that he
approved of her great kindness. But he bade her mother also come,
and she stayed in a tent near by.

Lagroin and two hundred men held the encampment, and every night the
recruits arrived from the village, drilled as before, and waited for the
fell disease to pass. No one knew its exact nature, but now and again,
in long years, some one going to Dalgrothe Mountain was seized by it, and
died, or was left stricken with a great loss of the senses, or the limbs.
Yet once or twice, they said, men had come up from it no worse at all.
There was no known cure, and the Little Chemist could only watch the
swift progress of the fever, and use simple remedies to allay the
suffering. Parpon knew that the disease had seized upon Valmond the
night of the burial of Gabriel. He remembered now the sickly, pungent
air that floated past, and how Valmond, weak from the loss of blood in