He laughed.
‘All right, old boy! I haven’t the slightest objection to your willing your traps to me, but every objection in the world to your leaving them. To be sure, every man, with anything to leave, ought to make his will betimes;—so fire away.’
In a little while the draught was finished.
‘I shall have it ready for your signature by to-morrow,’ he said.
I insisted it should be done at once. I was going home, I said. He yielded. The will was engrossed, signed, and witnessed that same morning; and in the afternoon I set out, the first part of the journey by rail, for the Moat.
CHAPTER LVII. ANOTHER DREAM.
The excitement of having something to do had helped me over the morning, and the pleasure of thinking of what I had done helped me through half the journey; but before I reached home I was utterly exhausted. Then I had to drive round by the farm, and knock up Mrs Herbert and Styles.
I could not bear the thought of my own room, and ordered a fire in my grandmother’s, where they soon got me into bed. All I remember of that night is the following dream.
I found myself at the entrance of the ice-cave. A burning sun beat on my head, and at my feet flowed the brook which gathered its life from the decay of the ice. I stooped to drink; but, cool to the eye and hand and lips, it yet burned me within like fire. I would seek shelter from the sun inside the cave. I entered, and knew that the cold was all around me; I even felt it; but somehow it did not enter into me. My brain, my very bones, burned with fire. I went in and in. The blue atmosphere closed around me, and the colour entered into my soul till it seemed dyed with the potent blue. My very being swam and floated in a blue atmosphere of its own. My intention—I can recall it perfectly—was but to walk to the end, a few yards, then turn and again brave the sun; for I had a dim feeling of forsaking my work, of playing truant, or of being cowardly in thus avoiding the heat. Something else too was wrong, but I could not clearly tell what. As I went on, I began to wonder that I had not come to the end. The gray walls yet rose about me, and ever the film of dissolution flowed along their glassy faces to the runnel below; still before me opened the depth of blue atmosphere, deepening as I went. After many windings, the path began to branch, and soon I was lost in a labyrinth of passages, of which I knew not why I should choose one rather than another. It was useless now to think of returning. Arbitrarily I chose the narrowest way, and still went on.