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Show 76 BY PATH AND TBAIL. tieulating, and tears flowing down his cheeks. He made his way to San Bafael, starting up at night to hurry on, and pushing over the almost impenetrable country at such a speed that when he reached his destination he was Broken down, a wreck and half demented. At times the awful solitude, the immeasurable stillness and isolation from human homes close in upon the lonely prospector and wear down the texture of the brain. So stealthily does the enemy of sanity creep in upon the do minion of the mind, that the doomed man is not con scious, or only dreamly conscious, of its approach. In the beginning he notices that he is talking aloud to him self, then, after a time, he talks as if some one is listen ing to him, and presently his questions are answered by, presumedly, a living voice. Then, at his meals, going and coming from his cabin, when he is burrowing into the side of a prospect, he hears a lone voice or many voices in conversation or in angry altercation. It is no use try ing to persuade himself that his imagination is imposing on his sense of hearing, the voices are too real and audi ble for that. Presently, lonely apparitions float in the air, mist- like and misshapen at first ; then, as they ap proach nearer, they assume human forms, descend to the earth and begin to talk and gesticulate. Then sometimes the wraith of a dead companion appears to him, walks with him to his rude hut a mile away, talks over old times, sits with him at his meals and sleeps with him. Nor, when wind- tanned and sun- scorched, he re turns to his friends, may he ever be talked out of his de lusions. He has heard the voices, seen the spectres, com panioned with the dead and there ' s the end of it. Some thing like this happened to Pedro Pomaro who died, a rich man, a few years ago, in the little burg of Santa |