a sigh of content, but trembling from weakness and the strain, though
Jo's hand had been under his head, and he had been fed like a little
child.

All day he lay and watched Jo as he worked, as he came and went.
Sometimes he put his hand to his head and said to Jo: "It hurts."
Then Jo would cool the wound with fresh water from the mountain spring,
and he would drag down the bowl to drink from it greedily.

It was as though he could never get enough water to drink. So the first
day in the hut at Vadrome Mountain passed without questioning on the part
of either Charley Steele or his host.

With good reason. Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past
was blotted out. He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory
to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and
strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight,
the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which
it could not find, for the door which would not open. The first day on
the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after that
awful night at the Cote Dorion, Jo. had seen that same blank
uncomprehending look--as it were, the first look of a mind upon the
world. This time he saw, and understood what he saw, and spoke as men
speak, but with no knowledge or memory behind it--only the involuntary
action of muscle and mind repeated from the vanished past.

Charley Steele was as a little child, and having no past, and
comprehending in the present only its limited physical needs and motions,
he had no hope, no future, no understanding. In three days he was upon
his feet, and in four he walked out of doors and followed Jo into the