He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach swirled past the brushing
branches of fir, and for an instant lay unnoticed, a scarcely
distinguishable mound of dust in the broken furrows of the road. Then,
more like a beast than a man, he crept on his hands and knees into the
steaming underbrush. Here he lay still until the clatter of harness
and the sound of voices faded in the distance. Had he been followed,
it would have been difficult to detect in that inert mass of rags any
semblance to a known form or figure. A hideous reddish mask of dust and
clay obliterated his face; his hands were shapeless stumps exaggerated
in his trailing sleeves. And when he rose, staggering like a drunken
man, and plunged wildly into the recesses of the wood, a cloud of dust
followed him, and pieces and patches of his frayed and rotten garments
clung to the impeding branches. Twice he fell, but, maddened and upheld
by the smarting spices and stimulating aroma of the air, he kept on his
course.

Gradually the heat became less oppressive; once when he stopped and
leaned exhaustedly against a sapling, he fancied he saw the zephyr he
could not yet feel in the glittering and trembling of leaves in the
distance before him. Again the deep stillness was moved with a faint
sighing rustle, and he knew he must be nearing the edge of the thicket.
The spell of silence thus broken was followed by a fainter, more musical
interruption--the glassy tinkle of water! A step further his foot
trembled on the verge of a slight ravine, still closely canopied by the
interlacing boughs overhead. A tiny stream that he could have dammed
with his hand yet lingered in this parched red gash in the hillside and
trickled into a deep, irregular, well-like cavity, that again overflowed
and sent its slight surplus on. It had been the luxurious retreat of
many a spotted trout; it was to be the bath of Lance Harriott. Without
a moment's hesitation, without removing a single garment, he slipped