he heat became less oppressive; once when he stopped and
leaned exhaustedly against a sapling, he fancied he saw the zephyr he
could not yet feel in the glittering and trembling of leaves in the
distance before him. Again the deep stillness was moved with a faint
sighing rustle, and he knew he must be nearing the edge of the thicket.
The spell of silence thus broken was followed by a fainter, more musical
interruption--the glassy tinkle of water! A step further his foot
trembled on the verge of a slight ravine, still closely canopied by the
interlacing boughs overhead. A tiny stream that he could have dammed
with his hand yet lingered in this parched red gash in the hillside and
trickled into a deep, irregular, well-like cavity, that again overflowed
and sent its slight surplus on. It had been the luxurious retreat of
many a spotted trout; it was to be the bath of Lance Harriott. Without
a moment's hesitation, without removing a single garment, he slipped
cautiously into it, as if fearful of losing a single drop. His head
disappeared from the level of the bank; the solitude was again unbroken.
Only two objects remained upon the edge of the ravine,--his revolver and
tobacco pouch.

A few minutes elapsed. A fearless blue jay alighted on the bank and
made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a
gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way
to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the
pouch and the revolver, which he regarded with mischievous fascination.
Then there was a splash, a grunt, a sudden dispersion of animated
nature, and the head of Mr. Lance Harriott appeared above the bank. It
was a startling transformation. Not only that he had, by this wholesale
process, washed himself and his light "drill" garments entirely clean,
but that he had, apparently by the same operation, morally cleansed
HIMSELF, and left every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds and
reputation in his bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, was
rosy, round, shining with irrepressible good humor and youthful levity.
His large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise and
thoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested his
elbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a boy's
delight in the movements of the gopher, who, after the first alarm,
returned cautiously to abduct the tobacco pouch. If any familiar had
failed to