But the pine knot that will burn is not so easily found.  Dick was forced to go a long way before he came upon the resinous sort.  He brought back a supply, having taken the precaution to provide matches in order to secure his way back.  The quest had to some extent lessened the morbid or supernatural forms of his terrors.  They all returned, however, when, having dismounted, he forgot to tie the horse, and it wandered off in search of herbage.  He called, but the beast made no sign of returning.  Alone again.  Alone in the night; spectral forms about him; the sleeping man adding to the ghostliness of the scene by his incoherent mutterings, his hideous, gulping breath, his ghastly, blood-curdling outcries.  Then through the gloom the shining outlines of the white oak, like shreds of shrouds hung on funeral foliage.  Ah! he would go mad—­he must break the brutish sleep of the sick man.

“Mr. Jones,” he wails—­and his own voice—­the comically commonplace name, “Mr. Jones,” even in the agony of his terror, the humor of the conjuncture glimmered in the boy’s crazed intelligence, and he laughed a wild, maniacal laugh.  But the laugh died out in a pulseless horror.  The sick man uprose on his elbow.  Dick, above him on the white-oak trunk, could see his very eyes bloodshot and wandering.  He uprose, almost sitting.  He passed his hand over his staring eyes, and began to murmur: 

“Did you bring me here to do murder, Elisha Boone?  You have bought my body, but you never bought my soul.  No, no!  I will not.  I say I will not.  Do you hear?  I will not!”

He glared wildly; then, his eyes meeting the full flame of the torch, he laughed, a dreadful, marrow-freezing laugh, and broke out again in clearer tones:  “I am yours, Elisha Boone, but my boy is not yours.  He was born in my shape, but he has his mother’s soul.  He will be a man; he will be your vengeance; he will undo all his father has done.  You’ve robbed me; you’ve made me rob others.  But if you touch, if you look at my boy, my first-born, you might as well hold a pistol at your head.  I’m no longer mad.  You must treat with him.  Ah! yes; I’ll do your bidding with the others.  I’ll make young Jack as much trouble as you ask, but you must make a path of gold for my boy.  You must give him what you have robbed from me.  Felon?  I’m no felon.  It was you who plotted it.  It was you that put the means in mad hands.  I can face my family.  I have no shame but that I was a coward.  My son!  He is no coward.  He is a soldier.  He is the pride of the Caribees.  He is the beloved of—­of—­”

The gibbering maniac, exhausted in body, still incoherently raving, sank back in piteous collapse, a terrifying gurgle breaking from his throat, while his tongue absolutely protruded from his jaws.

Dick, his terrors all forgotten in a new and overmastering horror, bethought him of Jack’s admonition about the water.  He slipped down from the tree, gathered the large moist leaves that clustered near the pool and held them to the burning lips, Jones swallowed the drops with a hideous gurgling avidity, clutching the boy’s hand ravenously to secure a more copious flow.  There was a tin cup in the holster under the invalid’s head.  Taking this, Dick dipped up water from the black pool between the green leaves; the hot lips sucked it in at one dreadful gulp.