be--had vanished like a mere mirage on the savannah at noon.

It was a day of despair which I spent in this place, sitting all
day indoors, for it was raining hard, immersed in my own gloomy
thoughts, pretending to doze in my seat, and out of the narrow
slits of my half-closed eyes seeing the others, also sitting or
moving about, like shadows or people in a dream; and I cared
nothing about them, and wished not to seem friendly, even for the
sake of the food they might offer me by and by.

Towards evening the rain ceased; and rising up I went out a short
distance to the neighbouring stream, where I sat on a stone and,
casting off my sandals, laved my bruised feet in the cool running
water. The western half of the sky was blue again with that
tender lucid blue seen after rain, but the leaves still glittered
with water, and the wet trunks looked almost black under the
green foliage. The rare loveliness of the scene touched and
lightened my heart. Away back in the east the hills of
Parahuari, with the level sun full on them, loomed with a strange
glory against the grey rainy clouds drawing off on that side, and
their new mystic beauty almost made me forget how these same
hills had wearied, and hurt, and mocked me. On that side, also
to the north and south, there was open forest, but to the west a
different prospect met the eye. Beyond the stream and the strip
of verdure that fringed it, and the few scattered dwarf trees
growing near its banks, spread a brown savannah sloping upwards
to a long, low, rocky ridge, beyond which rose a great solitary
hill, or rather mountain, conical in form, and clothed in forest
almost to the summit. This was the mountain Ytaioa, the chief
landmark in that district. As the sun went down over the ridge,