rse she'll grieve if I'm lost.
All the world isn't a cynic like you."

Anderson took his arm again.

"We'll go together," he said. "If you do care a straw about seeing her
again, come on quietly with me."

He yielded for the moment, but it required one continuous effort on
Anderson's part to keep him up to it. Plainly his reason was gone, and
the other man, growing weaker and weaker, found by the time the sun was
high in the heavens that the effort was more than he could make. It was
the end, or so close that he could only hope and pray the end would come
quickly. The young fellow had struggled on so bravely, so hopefully,
and now it had come to this. They had left the scrub behind them and
Anderson made his way to a tree, the only specimen of its kind in all
the wide plain, and lay down beneath its branches--to rest? No, he felt
in his heart it was to die. Helm he could not persuade to lie down. He
kept staggering on hopelessly round and round the tree, struggling to
keep in the shade, fancying, as many a lost man has done before him,
that he was "pushing on."

It was the same old story. Anderson had heard it told hundreds of times
over the camp fire, one man will lie down to die quietly, and the
other will go raving mad. So Helm had gone mad, poor chap; and then he
remembered his passionate prayer to him, not to let him go mad, to shoot
him if he saw he was going mad, and he lay and looked up at the hard
blue sky through the leaves, and at the watching crows, and knew that he
was only waiting for death, knew that he was too utterly weary to aid in
any way his mate. He listened to him muttering to himself for a little,
watched him as he went monotonously round and round. It was not so hard
after all--not near so hard for him as for Helm. If only the boy were
dead, he thought wearily, if only the boy were dead he would be glad
that this should end it, his life was never worth much, he had failed
all through, he would be glad to be at rest--if only the boy were there
before him; but the boy--the poor little helpless thing, he must make
another effort for the boy's sake, and he struggled to his feet again.
But the burning landscape was a blood-red blur before his eyes, and
then, quite suddenly it seemed to him, sight and hearing left him. He
was dying--was this death? How merciful death was--if only the boy--

*****

Very wearily he opened his eyes. Could it be that some one was pouring
water down his throat? Some