I have no
shame but that I was a coward. My son! He is no coward. He is a soldier.
He is the pride of the Caribees. He is the beloved of--of--"

The gibbering maniac, exhausted in body, still incoherently raving, sank
back in piteous collapse, a terrifying gurgle breaking from his throat,
while his tongue absolutely protruded from his jaws.

Dick, his terrors all forgotten in a new and overmastering horror,
bethought him of Jack's admonition about the water. He slipped down from
the tree, gathered the large moist leaves that clustered near the pool
and held them to the burning lips, Jones swallowed the drops with a
hideous gurgling avidity, clutching the boy's hand ravenously to secure
a more copious flow. There was a tin cup in the holster under the
invalid's head. Taking this, Dick dipped up water from the black pool
between the green leaves; the hot lips sucked it in at one
dreadful gulp.

"More, more; for God's sake, more!"

Dick filled it again, and again it was emptied.

"More--more--I'm burning--more!"

The boy was cruelly perplexed. He remembered vaguely hearing that fever
should be starved; that the thing craved was the dangerous thing; and he
moved away in a sort of compunctious terror.

"More--more! Oh, in the name of God, more!"

The words came gaspingly. Dick thought of the death-rattle he had heard
in Acredale when old man Nagle, the madman, died. He dared not give more
water, but he gathered leaves from the aromatic bushes and pressed them
to the fevered lips. Before he could withdraw them, the eager jaws
closed upon the balsamic shrub. They answered the purpose better than
the most scientific remedy in the pharmacopoeia, for the patient called
for no further drink, and presently fell into profound and undisturbed
sleep. Again the boy was alone with the daunting forces of the dark in
its grimmest and most terrifying mood. Alone! No; his mind was now taken
from all thought of self. He was with a fellow-townsman. The man had
mentioned Boone; had referred to deeds that he had heard all his life
associated with the father he had never seen. A wild thought flashed
upon him. Was the collapsed body at his feet his father's? He could not
see any resemblance in the dark, handsome face to the portrait at home,
though all through the flight from Richmond something in the man's
manner had seemed like a memory. He strove to recall the image his young
mind had cherished, the personality he had heard whispered