y came back. All
that I could gain from what was told me was that three weeks before I
had been found in my own bed, raging sick, and that my illness grew fast
into brain fever. I tried to speak of the dread things that had happened
to me, but I saw at once that no one looked on them save as the
hauntings of a dying frenzy, and so I closed my mouth and kept my own
counsel.

"I must see Nils, however, and so I asked for him. My mother told me
that he also had been ill with a strange fever, but that he was now
quite well again. Presently they brought him in, and when we were alone
I began to speak to him of the night on the mountain. I shall never
forget the shock that struck me down on my pillow when the boy denied
everything: denied having gone with me, ever having heard the cry,
having seen the valley, or feeling the deadly chill of the ghostly fog.
Nothing would shake his determined ignorance, and in spite of myself I
was forced to admit that his denials came from no policy of concealment,
but from blank oblivion.

"My weakened brain was in a turmoil. Was it all but the floating
phantasm of delirium? Or had the horror of the real thing blotted Nils's
mind into blankness so far as the events of the night in the Dead Valley
were concerned? The latter explanation seemed the only one, else how
explain the sudden illness which in a night had struck us both down? I
said nothing more, either to Nils or to my own people, but waited, with
a growing determination that, once well again, I would find that valley
if it really existed.

"It was some weeks before I was really well enough to go, but finally,
late in September, I chose a bright, warm, still day, the last smile of
the dying summer, and started early in the morning along the path that
led to Hallsberg. I was sure I knew where the trail struck off to the
right, down which we had come from the valley of dead water, for a great
tree grew by the Hallsberg path at the point where, with a sense of
salvation, we had found the home road. Presently I saw it to the right,
a little distance ahead.

"I think the bright sunlight and the clear air had worked as a tonic to
me, for by the time I came to the foot of the great pine, I had quite
lost faith in the verity of the vision that haunted me, believing at
last that it was indeed but the nightmare of madness. Nevertheless, I
turned sharply to the right, at the base of the tree, into a narrow path
that led through a dense thick