rgy, in which the will goes to the head like
a generous wine!"

The young man's enthusiasm ended by annoying Old Sandstone, who moved
away from his expansive companion, grumbling:

"Simon, the memory of Fenimore Cooper is making you lose your head.
You're getting too talkative, my son."

Simon was not losing his head, but he was possessed by a burning fever
and, after the hours which he had experienced two days before, was
quivering with impatience to return, so to speak, to the world of
abnormal actions.

In point of fact, Isabel's image was before him in all his thoughts
and in all his dreams. He paid hardly any attention to the precise aim
of his expedition or to the campaign which they were undertaking to
recover a certain object. The precious miniature was hidden in the rug
where he was sure to find it. Rolleston? His gang of ruffians? Men
stabbed in the back? A pack of inventions and nightmares! The only
reality was Isabel. The only aim before him was to distinguish himself
as a knight fighting for the love of his lady.

Meanwhile there were no longer any camps around wrecks, nor parties of
people searching for valuables, but only individual prowlers and very
few of these, as though most of the people were afraid to go too far
from the coast. The surface was becoming more broken, consisting, no
doubt, as Old Sandstone explained, of former sand banks which the
seismic disturbances had shaken down and mixed with the underlying
sedimentary strata. They had to go out of their way to avoid not
shattered rocks indeed, nor compact cliffs, but raised tracts of
ground that had not yet assumed those definite forms in which we
perceive the action of time, of time which separates, classifies and
discriminates, which organizes chaos and gives it a durable aspect.

They crossed a sheet of perfectly clear water, contained within a
circle of low hills. The bottom was carpeted with little white
pebbles. Then they descended, between two very high banks of mud, a
narrow gully through which the water trickled in slender cascades. As
they emerged from this gully, the Indian's horse shied. A man was
kneeling on the ground, groaning and writhing in pain, his face
covered with blood. Another man lay near him, his white face turned to
the sky.

Antonio and Simon at once sprang from their horses. When the wounded
man raised his head, Simon cried:

"Why, I know him . . . it's Williams, Lord Bakefield's secretary. And
I know the o