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Show 72 BY PATH AND TBAIL. down his intolerable rays till the very air vibrates with waves of heat. Nothing moves, nothing agitates the awe some silence, there is no motion in the heavens, in the dumb, dead air, on the burning sand. The madman tries to shout, but his throat can only return a hoarse guttural, and his blackened tongue hangs out as he gasps for breath. Hunger is gnawing him, thirst is devouring him, and he does not know it. The cells of his brain are filled with fire, his body is burning ; piece by piece he has torn away his clothes, and now, from throat to waist, he rips open his flannel shirt and flings it from him. His sight has left him, his paralyzed limbs can no longer support his fleshless body, and blind, naked, demented, he falls upon the desert and is dead. Who was he? A pros pector. Where was he going? To the mountains. For what? For gold. He follows is as did the wise men the star of Bethlehem. It lures the feet of men and often woos the rash and the brave to death and madness. When the prospector has achieved the conquest of the desert and reached the mountains, retaining his health and strength, he has accomplished much, but there yet remain many trials and hardships to test the courage and endurance of the brave man. Not the least of these is the wear and tear on the mind of unbroken silence and absence of all life. There is nothing that shatters cour age, chills the heart and paralyzes the nerves as surely as some inexplicable sound, either intermittent or persis tent. The brain that conceived the " wandering voice " struck the keynote of terror, and when Milton described the armless hand of gloomy vengeance, pursuing its vic tim through lonely places and striking when the terrified man thought himself within the security of darkness, he gave us one of the most awful examples of the fears of |