When he came to himself he was lying uneasily across the path, his head on the mossy bank and his feet hanging perilously over the water. It just crossed his mind that he might easily enough have lost his life had he fallen in the opposite direction, and he wondered dreamily whether it would not have simplified matters, yet, wretched as he was, he felt somehow glad to be alive. Away in the distance he could see Ben Ledi rising in its tranquil beauty beyond the foaming river. There was a rocky islet, too, in the centre of the flood, with a tall, stately fir-tree growing upon it, the dark foliage strongly contrasting with the white foam and the vivid green of the trees on the further bank. To his fancy, the rushing river seemed to ring out the tune of “I to the hills will lift mine eyes,” as he had heard it sung on the previous day at Fortingall Kirk. All sorts of half-misty memories thronged his fevered brain. He thought he was walking again with Angus Linklater as he carried the ugly little black lamb; or he was out boating with his father; or he was at rehearsal, and Mrs. Skoot was wrathfully haranguing him. Through all these feverish fancies, there remained the ever-present consciousness of physical misery, and the rankling recollection of the words he had heard from the two men who had passed him on the road. Presently, yet another fancy took possession of him. He was sitting with Evereld in a theatre, and could distinctly hear the actual words of Shylock’s part: “What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?” “I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true?” “I thank thee good Tubal; good news! good news! ha, ha, where? In Genoa?” The voice was certainly not Washington’s. He was puzzled. “Thou stickest a dagger in me,” it resumed, then suddenly broke off, and in the pause that followed he heard steps approaching. He opened his eyes, but saw only the familiar view of Ben Ledi and the foaming river. He had no notion that just behind him stood a tall, striking figure, and that some one was keenly studying him, not with the critical harshness of the passers-by in the road, but with the reverent sympathetic manner of the artist. CHAPTER XVI “_Every man’s task is his life-preserver. The conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him._”--Emerson. |Can I do anything for you?” asked a mellow, penetrating voice.