lead him back by the way he
came.

Strong now in his intention, he drew a hot stifling breath, set his
teeth and ran for a few yards; then staggered a few more, growing blind,
and feeling that his senses were fast leaving him. Then his brain
throbbed, a peculiar trembling weakness came over him, and, almost
unconsciously, he tottered along a few steps more, reeled, and fell
heavily upon the ground.

His senses did not quite leave him, for he knew that he was trying to
crawl through what seemed to him to be something like soft liquid opal,
with its wonderfully bright tints before his eyes, bluish, golden,
creamy, fiery, and pale, then there was a darkening around them as if he
were crawling into shadow; and again, directly after, as it appeared, he
could see a bright glow, toward which he involuntarily struggled, for it
was an instinctive effort now to preserve his life. And as he crawled
onward, the glow grew brighter, he could breathe more freely, and the
light gradually assumed the hue of bright sunshine, where he fell
passive beneath the dense foliage of a huge tree.

Everything was very dreamy now for a time. His head throbbed and felt
confused, and a sickly, deathly sensation made his brain reel. By
degrees this passed away, and he lay gazing at the strange opalescent
something through which he felt that he had passed, and by degrees he
realised that he was watching the great curtain of mist made glorious by
the sunshine, and easily understood now why, in his strange
semi-insensibility, this had seemed to be a liquid through which he had
crawled while breathing the strange mephitic air.

"Then I did go in the right direction," was his next thought, as he
still lay feeble and languid, and as if regaining his senses after
taking some powerful opiate.

He felt a kind of satisfaction at this, and luxuriously drew in great
draughts of soft warm air. For it was a delight to breathe freely, and
lie there without making any exertion. The trees were so green and
bright, and the flowers of such delicious tints, especially those he
could see climbing up and up, and spreading their wealth of blossoms in
one spot, till that was one lovely sheet of colour.

"It doesn't matter."

These words pretty well expressed Oliver Lane's thoughts for some time
before he attempted to move. The past, save and except the dim memory
of his having been in some trouble in a mist and losing his way, had no
existence for him, and th