on his couch of furs as morosely as Beorn
himself, striving to grope his way back into the darkness from which
his mind had issued, torturing himself to remember how much his lips
had admitted during the time when his vigilance was relaxed. He could
only recall the shadows of his words and acts; the real things, which
lurked behind the shadows, continually evaded capture. Yet it seemed
to him that he must have laid bare all his life, confessing to Eyelids
and his sister his every affection and his every treachery, whether
accomplished or intended.

Then, if he had done that, he had told Peggy to her face how he was
purposing to desert her! It was this suspicion which kept him silent;
he waited for her to reveal herself. But she refused to help him; in
her looks there was no condemnation, and in her treatment of him
nothing but gentleness. Surely there should have been contempt, if she
had known _all_ about him!

Two pictures stood out so sharply from the background chaos of his
impressions, that he believed them to be veritable memories. The one
was of Peggy kneeling at his side, taking him in her arms, as though
he were a child, and laying his head upon her breast, and of himself
mistaking her for his mother or Mordaunt, and speaking to her all
manner of tenderness. The other was of his perpetual terror lest
Spurling had gone southward without him, having stolen his share of
the treasure; and of one night when Peggy to quiet him had roused up
Eyelids, who had brought in Spurling--and Spurling's hands were bound.

When he had come to himself, his first action had been to look round
for Spurling--and he was not there. Two days had now passed, and there
was still no sign of him. As his strength returned, the fear of his
delirium gained ground upon him--lest Spurling had escaped. Brooding
over the past with a sick man's fancy, he discovered a new cause for
agitation--_if Spurling had departed, he would never know the truth
about Mordaunt_. For the recovery of the gold he scarcely cared now;
the apparent actualness of Mordaunt's presence, bending over him in
his delirium, had recalled her vividly to his memory, awakening the
passion which he had striven to crush down, so that now it seemed
all-important to him that he should ask Spurling that one question,
"Was the body that was found near Forty-Mile clothed in a woman's
dress?"

The return of a certain season, which the mind has associated with a
special experience, w