Now his road dropped suddenly over a hillside; down it wound and wound, till Van thought he would never reach the bottom that was hidden by the forest that bent over him on all sides. It was a wild, deep glen. But far below there was the sound of rushing, gurgling water!
He pricked up his drooping ears. A minute ago he had felt that he was like to die, but there was life calling to him again.
Above his head stretched a vast railway trestle, over which a train was crawling, with groans and screams of iron wheels on iron rails. That might be a wonderful thing to men, but nothing called to Van but the singing stream and his own Betsy.
He dropped down, down, to the lowest level of the gully, and stretched himself flat on the green moss, with his hot nose in the laughing water. Oh, it was good! He drank and drank till his thirsty body was satisfied, and his tongue grew cool, and like a real tongue, instead of like a slab of fire in his mouth. He drank till he wanted no more. Then he fell asleep on a heap of leaves, a long deep sleep.
All the afternoon he lay there. The sun set, the stars came out, and a little moon climbed high and looked down into the ravine; shining white on the heaving body of a lonely waif of a dog, collarless, homeless and piteous. The little moon traveled on and followed the sun over the hill, and out of sight. The stars grew pale and the dawn of another morning trembled in the forest aisles. Down along the stream lay a thick, icy fog, like a long roll of cotton batting.
Van, waking at last from that long sleep, looked out into the mist, dazed and lost and shivering. Slowly his senses came back to him. His stomach cried out to him that he had had nothing to eat since the night before last; his legs told him that they had carried him faithfully and far, but that they could not last forever; and then his homing instinct told him that he must cross that little roaring stream if he would follow the road that led across the world to his little mistress.
What mattered that old hatred of water now? In he plunged, and the rushing current carried his weak, struggling body far along before he could make the farther shore. But make it he did. He crawled up on a shelving curve, dragged himself out, shook the water from his shivering sides, and started off on a run that warmed him and saved him from a chill.
The run changed to a weary plod before he reached the top of the ravine, but he kept on—westward, always westward! Wood, hill, valley, farm, forest again—he went by them with only one thought. On the road he picked up a crust of bread, dropped by some schoolboy, and devoured it greedily.
Through another town. Here he went warily, dodging everybody. He passed through safely, and journeyed on and on. If only his strength could last until he reached home!
There was another town ahead. He approached it cautiously. There was a something familiar about it. The streets had a smell that brought some memory to his numbing faculties.