Camille. I saw him topple, and shouted to him; but before my voice was
well out, he swayed, collapsed, and came down with a running thud that
shook the ground. Once he wheeled over, like a shot rabbit, and, bounding
thwack with his head against a flat boulder not a dozen yards from me,
lay stunned and motionless.

I scrambled to him, quaking all over. His breath came quick, and a spirt
of blood jerked from a sliced cut in his forehead at every pump of his
heart.

I kicked out a wad of cool moist turf, and clapped it in a pad over the
wound, my handkerchief under. For his body, he was shaken and bruised,
but otherwise not seriously hurt.

Presently he came to himself; to himself in the best sense of the
word--for Camille was sane.

I have no explanation to offer. Only I know that, as a fall will set a
long-stopped watch pulsing again, the blow here seemed to have restored
the misplaced intellect to its normal balance.

When he woke, there was a new soft light of sanity in his eyes that was
pathetic in the extreme.

"Monsieur," he whispered, "the terror has passed."

"God be thanked! Camille," I answered, much moved.

He jerked his poor battered head in reverence.