“Death of my life! What’s the matter with your voice, cap’n? You croak like an old raven. And there’s a most devilish queer odour around here, like burned meat——”
Crawford broke into a laugh.
“Burned meat! For once you spoke a true word——”
Frontin caught him as he fell, still laughing, and passed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER VI
SOME PROBLEMS ARE BEST LEFT UNSOLVED
A dream came to Crawford. It seemed that he lay beneath a huge pine, wind-twisted and curiously crooked, at the very brink of a dizzy cliff. Below and before him was outspread a magnificent panorama; a blue lake, blue as the sky, still and deep and very clear, and out beyond this mile after mile of green forest running up to the horizon, until green merged imperceptibly with blue.
As he lay here, it seemed that Phelim Burke came and stood before him. This was not the scarred and broken man he had last seen, but the laughing, gallant gentleman of earlier days, sword at side and joy of life sparkling in the gay eyes of him. Phelim stood there and smiled, took a pinch of snuff, chuckled at Crawford’s astonished ejaculation.
“Faith, lad, did I not say I’d stay with ye? So here ye are, Hal, and here am I.”
“Where?” asked Crawford in his dream.
“The end of our trail together, lad. Ye may deny the world, but escape it ye cannot. What’s over the horizon for all men, Hal?”