Terry flushed and went on. "I started through the brush to get to the doctor, but I must have been sicker than I thought, for I don't remember anything after entering the woods. It's all a dream to me. Something pulled me up this way--I've always hoped to be the one to open up the Hills--and I kept coming. I remember lying down at dusk and being picked up and carried through the night. I must have been delirious for about ten days, but had conscious periods every day. Every time I had a clear spell I swallowed several tablets of the quinine Sears gave me. I guess that quinine saved me--I would like to have Sears know about it. "Those ten days are rather confused, of course, but I remember the care the women gave me and some of their rough remedies. I came out of the delirium two weeks ago but was pretty weak, so did not try to get up, but lay there listening to their talk. Their dialect is quite like the Bogobo--I think they're just a tribe of Bogobos separated from the others by those infernal woods. I soon learned that they had spared me and cared for me because they thought that I was daft. You know that these primitive tribes never molest lunatics--they think that they are possessed of devils which, if disturbed, will enter the heads of whoever harms their present host. Probably I raved a good bit on the way up, when they were following me. "When they realized that I was sane the tribe split into two factions--one wanted to finish me but the other insisted that my coming was a good augury. It was rather queer to lie here and listen to the arguments pro and con--I pulled pretty hard for the negative contenders! The question was finally decided by the old chief, Ohto, who announced that my fate would be determined when next the limocons sang. That settled the immediate question. "The limocon is a big species of pigeon that nests in the Hills. It seldom sings, and then only at nightfall. It is reverenced by these people, who believe that it sings prophecies of good or evil, the character of the omen being determined by the point of the compass in which it lights to offer its rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs--I will show you that after supper. It is a queer superstition, Major: they think that a song in the west means greatest harm--death by famine or disease or intra-tribal wars, from the north the omen is ill but to a lesser degree, south is good, but a song from the east augurs greatest happiness to their people." The Major was pulling on a dead pipe, absorbed in Terry's story but building into it all of the suffering and loneliness and suspense which the lad ignored in the telling.