y the position of our camping place, and after paddling day
and night, and making many weary portages, without food or covering, he
reached us two days later.

This, more or less, was the story, and we, knowing whereof he spoke,
knew that every word was literally true, and at the same time went to
the building up of a hideous and prodigious lie.

Once the recital was over, he collapsed, and Silver Fizz, after a
general expression of sympathy from the rest of us, came again to the
rescue.

"But now, Mister, you jest _got_ to eat and drink whether you've a mind
to, or no."

And Matt Morris, cook that night, soon had the fried trout and bacon,
and the wheat cakes and hot coffee passing round a rather silent and
oppressed circle. So we ate round the fire, ravenously, as we had eaten
every night for the past six weeks, but with this difference: that
there was one among us who was more than ravenous--and he gorged.

In spite of all our devices he somehow kept himself the centre of
observation. When his tin mug was empty, Morris instantly passed the
tea-pail; when he began to mop up the bacon grease with the dough on his
fork, Hank reached out for the frying pan; and the can of steaming
boiled potatoes was always by his side. And there was another difference
as well: he was sick, terribly sick before the meal was over, and this
sudden nausea after food was more eloquent than words of what the man
had passed through on his dreadful, foodless, ghost-haunted journey of
forty miles to our camp. In the darkness he thought he would go crazy,
he said. There were voices in the trees, and figures were always lifting
themselves out of the water, or from behind boulders, to look at him and
make awful signs. Jake constantly peered at him through the underbrush,
and everywhere the shadows were moving, with eyes, footsteps, and
following shapes.

We tried hard to talk of other things, but it was no use, for he was
bursting with the rehearsal of his story and refused to allow himself
the chances we were so willing and anxious to grant him. After a good
night's rest he might have had more self-control and better judgment,
and would probably have acted differently. But, as it was, we found it
impossible to help him.

Once the pipes were lit, and the dishes cleared away, it was useless to
pretend any longer. The sparks from the burning logs zigzagged upwards
into a sky brilliant with stars. It was all wonderfully still and
peaceful, an