"What?" cried Jason, "and leave you here to die?"
"That may be my fate in any case," said Sunlocks faintly, "so go, brother—go—farewell—and God bless you!"
"Courage," whispered Jason again. "I know a farm not far away, and the good man that keeps it. He will give us milk and bread; and we'll sleep under his roof to-night, and start afresh in the morning."
But the passionate voice fell on a deaf ear, for Sunlocks was unconscious before half the words were spoken. Then Jason lifted him to his shoulder once more, and set out for the third time over the rocky waste.
It would be a weary task to tell of the adventures that afterwards befell him. In the fading sunlight of that day he crossed trackless places, void of any sound or sight of life; silent, save for the hoarse croak of the raven; without sign of human foregoer, except some pyramidal heaps of stones, that once served as mournful sentinels to point the human scapegoat to the cities of refuge.
He came up to the lake and saw that it was poisonous, for the plovers that flew over it fell dead from its fumes; and when he reached the farm he found it a ruin, the good farmer gone, and his hearth cold. He toiled through mud and boggy places, and crossed narrow bridle paths along perpendicular sides of precipices. The night came on as he walked, the short night of that northern summer, where the sun never sets in blessed darkness that weary eyes may close in sleep, but a blood-red glow burns an hour in the northern sky at midnight, and then the bright light rises again over the unrested world. He was faint for bread, and athirst for water, but still he struggled on—on—on—on—over the dismal chaos.
Sometimes when the pang of thirst was strongest he remembered what he had heard of the madness that comes of it—that the afflicted man walks round in a narrow circle, round and round over the self-same place (as if the devil's bridle bound him like an unbroken horse) until nature fails and he faints and falls. Yet thinking of himself so, in that weary spot, with Sunlocks over him, he shuddered, but took heart of strength and struggled on.
And all this time Sunlocks lay inert and lifeless on his shoulder, in a deep unconsciousness that was broken by two moments only of complete sensibility. In the first of these he said:
"I must have been dreaming, for I thought I had found my brother."
"Your brother?" said Jason.