hall be
forgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing shall
ever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for he is dead
now--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have decently buried his
poor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood--OUR wood now! The
sweet old days again; for I know that you would not have it different,
nor would I.

Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that would
soon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the forest echo
with my calls. "Rima! Rima!" I called again and again, and waited for
some response; and heard only the familiar night-sounds--voices of
insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog, and a low murmur in the topmost
foliage, moved by some light breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenched
with dew, bruised and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks
and thorns and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually the
excitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready to
drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length I crept back to
my hut, to cast myself on my grass bed and sink into a dull, miserable,
desponding stupor.

But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to search
the forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire Kua-ko had
described to me existed, it would still be possible to believe that
he had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched all day and found
nothing; but the area was large, and to search it thoroughly would
require several days.

On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never again
would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had indeed been
a vain one. There could be no mistake: just such an open place as the
Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant trees standing apart;
while one tree stood killed and blackened by fire, surrounded by a huge
heap, sixty or seventy yards across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks
and ashes. Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the
ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw
their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at
the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty
feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred
and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning
leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow,
swift an