was home. Strangely enough, the Senator
did not care at all, and he had
just enough sanity left to wonder why,
and to be worried. It was the ``walking
typhoid'' that had caught up with
him, and he was listless, and he made
strange gestures and did foolish things
as he stumbled down the mountain.
He was going over a little knoll now,
and he could see the creek that ran
around his house, but he was not
touched. He would just as soon have
lain down right where he was, or have
turned around and gone back, except
that it was hot and he wanted to get
to the water. He remembered that it
was nigh Christmas; he saw the snow
about him and the cakes of ice in the
creek. He knew that he ought not to
be hot, and yet he was--so hot that
he refused to reason with himself even
a minute, and hurried on. It was odd
that it should be so, but just about
that time, over in Virginia, a cattle
dealer, nearing home, stopped to tell
a neighbor how he had tricked some
black-whiskered fool up in the mountains.
It may have been just when he
was laughing aloud over there, that the
Senator, over here, tore his woollen