"I know it is."
"Vell, maype you don'd nefer peen misdooken, brofessor?" insinuated Hans, recovering for a moment from his dazed condition.
The professor did not notice the Dutch boy's words, for the man on the bed of grass drew a long, fluttering breath and slowly opened his eyes.
"I thought I saw the palace once more," he whispered. "It was all a delusion."
"That is true," nodded the professor, "it is all a delusion. Such a place as this Silver Palace is an absurd impossibility. The illness through which you have passed has affected your mind, and you dreamed of the palace."
"It is not so!" returned the man, reproachfully. "I have proof! You doubt me—you will not believe?"
"Be calm—be quiet," urged the professor. "This excitement will cut your life short by minutes, and minutes are precious to you now."
"That is true; minutes are precious," hastily whispered the man. "It is not the fever I am dying of—no, no! The water from the spring you may see behind the hut—it has destroyed many people. This morning, before you came, a peon found me here. He told me—he said the spring was poison. The water robs men of strength—of life. I could not understand him well. He went away and left me. I could see him running across the desert, as if from a plague. And now I am dying—dying!"
"But the Silver Palace?" observed Frank Merriwell. "You are forgetting that."
"Yah," nodded the Dutch lad; "you peen forgetting dot, ain'd id?"