joice and feast, rewarding them with the skin, bones, and entrails.
But at length one of the dogs fell lame, and Nuflo, who was very hungry,
made its lameness an excuse for dispatching it, which he did apparently
without compunction, notwithstanding that the poor brute had served
him well in its way. He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the
intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food
with him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals to
feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. "But what does
it matter?" I argued with myself. "All flesh, clean and unclean, should
be, and is, equally abhorrent to me, and killing animals a kind of
murder. But now I find myself constrained to do this evil thing that
good may come. Only to live I take it now--this hateful strength-giver
that will enable me to reach Rima, and the purer, better life that is to
be."

During all that time, when we toiled onwards league after league in
silence, or sat silent by the nightly fire, I thought of many things;
but the past, with which I had definitely broken, was little in my mind.
Rima was still the source and centre of all my thoughts; from her they
rose, and to her returned. Thinking, hoping, dreaming, sustained me in
those dark days and nights of pain and privation. Imagination was the
bread that gave me strength, the wine that exhilarated. What sustained
old Nuflo's mind I know not. Probably it was like a chrysalis, dormant,
independent of sustenance; the bright-winged image to be called at some
future time to life by a great shouting of angelic hosts and noises of
musical instruments slept secure, coffined in that dull, gross nature.

The old beloved wood once more! Never did his native village in some
mountain valley seem more beautiful to the Switzer, returning, war-worn,
from long voluntary exile, than did that blue cloud on the horizon--the
forest where Rima dwelt, my bride, my beautiful--and towering over
it the dark cone of Ytaioa, now seem to my hungry eyes! How near at
last--how near! And yet the two or three intervening leagues to be
traversed so slowly, step by step--how vast the distance seemed! Even at
far Riolama, when I set out on my return, I scarcely seemed so far from
my love. This maddening impatience told on my strength, which was small,
and hindered me. I could not run nor even walk fast; old Nuflo, slow,
and sober, with no flame consuming his heart, was more than my