III--THE DANGER OF LOOKING INTO A POOL OF WATER


After leaving the road the man slackened his pace, and now went
forward, rather deviously, with a distinct feeling of fatigue. He
could not account for this, though truly the interminable loquacity
of that country doctor offered itself in explanation. Seating
himself upon a rock, he laid one hand upon his knee, back upward, and
casually looked at it. It was lean and withered. He lifted both
hands to his face. It was seamed and furrowed; he could trace the
lines with the tips of his fingers. How strange!--a mere bullet-
stroke and a brief unconsciousness should not make one a physical
wreck.

"I must have been a long time in hospital," he said aloud. "Why,
what a fool I am! The battle was in December, and it is now summer!"
He laughed. "No wonder that fellow thought me an escaped lunatic.
He was wrong: I am only an escaped patient."

At a little distance a small plot of ground enclosed by a stone wall
caught his attention. With no very definite intent he rose and went
to it. In the center was a square, solid monument of hewn stone. It
was brown with age, weather-worn at the angles, spotted with moss and
lichen. Between the massive blocks were strips of grass the leverage
of whose roots had pushed them apart. In answer to the challenge of
this ambitious structure Time had laid his destroying hand upon it,
and it would soon be "one with Nineveh and Tyre." In an inscription
on one side his eye caught a familiar name. Shaking with excitement,
he craned his body across the wall and read: