eebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over
the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it.
There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and
wait till help should reach him--it was manifestly impossible for him
to seek it.

Meantime, the little stream beside him offered first aid. He tried it
with his foot and found it slight and shallow, albeit with a rocky bed
that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much
better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of
the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at
times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new
strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher
and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would
be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength
and oriented himself, he could quickly get down into the hills.

Animated by these thoughts, he held his way up-stream, hoping at every
step to reach the gorge from which the flow issued. He would have
known this by the sound of the falling water, but, weakening soon, he
found he must abandon hope of getting up to it. However, by resting
and scrambling up the rocks, he kept on longer than he would have
believed possible. Encountering at length, as he struggled upward, a
ledge and a clump of bushes, he crawled weakly on hands and knees into
it, too spent to struggle farther, stretched himself on the flattened
brambles and sank into a heavy sleep.

* * * * *

He woke in broad daylight. Consciousness returned slowly and he raised
himself with pain from his rough couch. His wounds were stiff, and he
lay for a long time on his back looking up at the sky. At length he
dragged himself to an open space near where he had slept and looked
about. He appeared to be near the foot of a mountain quite strange to
him, and in rather an exposed place. The shelter that had served him
for the night proved worthless in daylight and, following his strongly
developed instinct of self-preservation, de Spain started once more up
the rocky path of the stream. He clambered a hundred feet above where
he had slept before he found a hiding-place. It was at the foot of a
tiny waterfall where the brook, striking a ledge of granite, had
patiently hollowed out a shallow pool. Beside this a great mass of
frost-bitten rock h