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Show BY PATH AND TKAIL. 71 ing flesh. The carcass of man or beast is dried by solar suction, the skin is parched and blackened and tightens on the bones ; the teeth show white, for the lips are gone with contraction, the eyes are burned out and the sock ets filled with sand, and the hair is matted, dry and sand-sprinkled. If the lonely man be so unfortunate as to es cape death by suffocation, he awakes with the dawn. Dawn on the desert while the stars still glow in cerulean blue. It is a vision of transcendent beauty, for toward the east the sky is bathed in a sea of amber, light blue and roseate. The stillness is intense, illimitable, it is the preternatural. The man has lost all appreciation of the beautiful, the divine silence has no charms for him, it suggests the grave. Twilight expands into day, the instinct of life, of self- preservation, dominates him, he rises and answers the call of the mountains which allure him by their ap parent nearness. The remorseless sun times his pace with his; if he stands still, the sun stands still, if he moves forward, the sun moves forward; if he runs, the sun pursues, and to the lost man staggering in the desert it is as if the air was afire and his brain ablaze. The pallor of mental anguish and physical pain are ashening his skin ; his eyes are wild and shot with blood ; his fea tures are drawn and his face is neighbor to death. And now he searches for his knife and cuts away his boots, for his feet are swollen shockingly, his hair is ' beginning to bleach, his gait is shambling, and the strong man of yesterday is aging rapidly. Eeason, for some time, has been bidding him good- bye, and is now leaving him, it is gone forever, and only the primal instinct of self- pres ervation remains with him in his horrible isolation from human aid. In this lonely wilderness the cruel sun pours |