The words came gaspingly. Dick thought of the death-rattle he had heard in Acredale when old man Nagle, the madman, died. He dared not give more water, but he gathered leaves from the aromatic bushes and pressed them to the fevered lips. Before he could withdraw them, the eager jaws closed upon the balsamic shrub. They answered the purpose better than the most scientific remedy in the pharmacopoeia, for the patient called for no further drink, and presently fell into profound and undisturbed sleep. Again the boy was alone with the daunting forces of the dark in its grimmest and most terrifying mood. Alone! No; his mind was now taken from all thought of self. He was with a fellow-townsman. The man had mentioned Boone; had referred to deeds that he had heard all his life associated with the father he had never seen. A wild thought flashed upon him. Was the collapsed body at his feet his father's? He could not see any resemblance in the dark, handsome face to the portrait at home, though all through the flight from Richmond something in the man's manner had seemed like a memory. He strove to recall the image his young mind had cherished, the personality he had heard whispered about in the gossiping groups of Acredale. This was not the gay, the brilliant, the fascinating _bon viveur_ who had been the life of society from Warchester to Bucephalo, from Pentica to New York. Ah! what were the mystic terrors of the night, what the oppressive surroundings of this charnel-house of Nature, to the awful spectacle of this unmanned mind, this delirious echo of past guilt, past cowardice, past shame?