Through the long night they wrestled with him, blind and raving. At first it seemed as if Naomi's presence soothed him, and he would let her stroke his arms and hands. But after a time he ceased to recognise her. He gabbled about her a good deal, but did not know she was there. His delirium was full of strange tags--a chicken brood he was raising, a sick cow, a jaunt into Rye with Realf of Grandturzel, a dozen harmless homely things which were all transfused with an alien horror, all somehow made frightful, so that Reuben felt he could never look on chickens, cows or Rye again without a shudder. Sometimes there were crises of extraordinary violence when he was with difficulty held down in bed, and these at last wore him out. Towards dawn he fell into a troubled sleep. Naomi slept too, huddled in a chair, every now and then a sob quivering through her. The winter dawn slowly crept in on her, showing her pitiful figure--showing Mrs. Backfield sick and puffy with tears, Reuben dry-eyed beside the bed, and Harry respited in sleep. Outside the crest of Boarzell was once more visible in the growing light--dark, lumpish, malevolent, against the kindling of the sky. § 9. The next few days were terrible, in the house and on the farm. Indoors the women nursed Harry, and outdoors Reuben did double work, sleeping at night in an arm-chair by his brother's side. Harry had recovered consciousness, but it could not be said that he had "come to himself." "Beautiful Harry," with all his hopes and ardours, his dreams and sensibilities, had run away like a gipsy, and in his place was a new Harry, blind and mad, who moaned and laughed, with stony silences, and now and then strange fits of struggling as if the runaway gipsy strove to come back. Dr. Espinette refused to say whether this state was permanent or merely temporary. Neither could he be sure whether it was due to his injuries or to the shock of finding himself blind. Reuben felt practically convinced that his brother was sane during the few moments he had spoken to him alone, but the doctor seemed doubtful. Reuben was glad to escape into his farm work. The atmosphere of sickness was like a cloud, which grew blacker and blacker the nearer one came to its heart. Its heart was that little room in the gable, where he spent those wretched nights, disturbed by Harry's moaning. Out of doors, in the yard or the cowshed or the stable, he breathed a cleaner atmosphere. The heaviness, the vague remorse, grew lighter. And strange to say, out on Boarzell, which was the cause of his trouble, they grew lightest of all.