The problem was so
much too big for poor Dannie that reason kindly slipped a cog. He
broke from the grasp of the woman, fled through the back door, and
took to the woods.
He ran as if fiends were after him, and he ran and ran. And when he
could run no longer, he walked, but he went on. Just on and on. He
crossed forests and fields, orchards and highways, streams and
rivers, deep woods and swamps, and on, and on he went. He felt
nothing, and saw nothing, and thought nothing, save to go on,
always on. In the dark he stumbled on and through the day he
staggered on, and he stopped for nothing, save at times to lift
water to his parched lips.
The bushes took his hat, the thorns ripped his shirt, the water
soaked his shoes and they spread and his feet came through and the
stones cut them until they bled. Leaves and twigs stuck in his
hair, and his eyes grew bloodshot, his lips and tongue swollen, and
when he could go no further on his feet, he crawled on his knees,
until at last he pitched forward on his face and lay still. The
tumult was over and Mother Nature set to work to see about
repairing damages.
Dannie was so badly damaged, soul, heart, and body, that she never
would have been equal to the task, but another woman happened that
way and she helped. Dannie was carried to a house and a doctor
dressed his hurts. When the physician got down to first principles, and
found a big, white-bodied, fine-faced Scotchman in the heart of the
wreck, he was amazed.
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