A moment he stood, gazing at her in wondering awe. Then his
far-overtaxed strength failed;--his abused nerves refused to bear
more,--and he sank,--a pitiful, cowering heap at her feet. Hiding his
face in his shaking hands, he sobbed like a child.



CHAPTER VI.

IN THE LOG HOUSE BY THE RIVER.


Those two women managed, somehow, to get the almost helpless stranger
into the house, where Auntie Sue, after providing him with nightclothes,
left by one of her guests, by tactful entreaty and judicial commands,
persuaded him to go to bed.

Then followed several days and nights of weary watching. There were
times when the man lay with closed eyes, so weak and exhausted that he
seemed to be drifting out from these earthly shores on the deep waters
of that wide and unknown sea into which all the streams of life finally
flow. But, always, Auntie Sue miraculously held him back. There were
other times when, by all the rules of the game, he should have worn a
strait-jacket;--when his delirium filled the room with all manner
of horrid creatures from the pit; when leering devils and loathsome
serpents and gibbering apes tormented him until his unnatural strength
was the strength of a fiend, and his tortured nerves shrieked in agony.
But Auntie Sue perversely ignored the rules of the game. And never did
the man, even in his most terrible moments, fail to recognize in the