in front of him just as he had started across a
trestle-work; but he ran forward across the open ties, and leaped
clear of the track on the farther side, just when another instant
would have been too late. He stood a moment, only half-pausing among
the palmettos and rushes as the hurtling mass thundered by; then
pushed quickly into the whirling dust of the track and hurried on
between the clicking rails, not knowing that yonder dark, dwindling
speck behind was bearing away from him strange tidings from the cure.

The summer was coming on; the suns were hot. There were leagues on
leagues of unbroken shaking prairie with never a hand-breadth of
shade, but only the glowing upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds
moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly
fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the
far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of
serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue
of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea,
and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad
went by broad, frowzy, treeless clearings flanked with impassable oozy
ditches; but shade there was none.

Nor was there peace. Always as he strode along, something he could not
outgo was at his side, gaunt, wounded, soiled, whispering: "Turn back;
turn back, and settle with me," and ever put off with promises--after
that fashion as old as the world--to do no end of good things if only
the one right thing might be left undone.

And so because there were no shade, no peace, and no turning back, no
one day's march made him stronger for the next; and at length, when he
came to the low thatch of a negro-cabin, under the shadow of its
bananas he sank down in its doorway, red with fever.

There he had to stay many days; but in the end he was up and on his
way again. He left the Atchafalaya behind him. It was easier going
now. There was shade. Under his trudging feet was the wagon-road
along the farther levee of the Teche. Above him great live-oaks
stretched their arms clad in green vestments and gray drapings, the
bright sugar-cane fields were on his left, and on his right the
beautiful winding bayou. In his face, not joy, only pallid eagerness,
desire fixed upon fulfilment, and knowledge that happiness was
something else; a young, worn face, with hard lines about the mouth
and neck; the face of one who had thought s