y toward
the alluring goal. But soon his strength again deserted him, the sweat
poured from his brow, his wound began to throb and beat, and he felt as
though his skull was compressed by an iron circle. His keen eyes, too,
failed, for the objects he tried to see blended with the dust of the
road, the horizon reeled up and down before his eyes, and he felt as
though the hard pavement had turned to a yielding bog under his feet.

Yet he took little heed of all these things, for never before had such
bright visions filled his mind. His thoughts grew marvellously vivid,
and image after image rose before the wide eyes of his soul, not at
his own behest, but as if summoned by a secret will outside of his
consciousness. Now he fancied that he was lying at Kasana's feet,
resting his head on her lap while he gazed upward into her lovely
face--anon he saw Hosea standing before him in his glittering armor,
as he had beheld him a short time ago, only his garb was still more
gorgeous and, instead of the dim light in the tent, a ruddy glow like
that of fire surrounded him. Then the finest oxen and rams in his herds
passed before him and sentences from the messages he had learned darted
through his mind; nay he sometimes imagined that they were being shouted
to him aloud. But ere he could grasp their import, some new dazzling
vision or loud rushing noise seemed to fill his mental eye and ear.

He pressed onward, staggering like a drunken man, with drops of sweat
standing on his brow and with parched mouth. Sometimes he unconsciously
raised his hand to wipe the dust from his burning eyes, but he cared
little that he saw very indistinctly what was passing around him, for
there could be nothing more beautiful than what he beheld with his
inward vision.

True, he was often aware that he was suffering intensely, and he
longed to throw himself exhausted on the ground, but a strange sense of
happiness sustained him. At last he was seized with the delusion that
his head was swelling and growing till it attained the size of the head
of the colossus he had seen the day before in front of a temple gate,
then it rose to the height of the palm-trees by the road-side, and
finally it reached the mist shrouding the firmament, then far above it.
Then it suddenly seemed as though this head of his was as large as the
whole world, and he pressed his hands on his temples to clasp his brow;
for his neck and shoulders were too weak to support the weight o