"The bullet hit
a rock, an' it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between
the eyes. He isn't dead, _and he ain't going to die!_"
How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
fairies' hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was
riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a
girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at
last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged
into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped
after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds like the
clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long sleep,
from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a face very
near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of tears.
And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, "Alan!"
He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed
against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth
and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end
of the race had come, and he had won.
This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he
sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him,
and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old
housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from
him.
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