CHAPTER XX. 
SICK IN A STRANGE LAND.—ADVENTURE WITH A SNAKE,— 
HOW A SQUIRREL WAS CHARMED. 
I was in the forest, under a large tree, very ill. I fad 
been sick with a fever for some weeks, and all the medi- 
cine I had taken seemed to do me no good. Little by 
little my strength gave way. ‘The days and the nights 
seemed so long! I am sure that if you had seen me 
you would have pitied me. There I was in that great for- 
est, which was full of wild men and still wilder beasts. 
How helpless, how sad, how lonely I felt! 
The hand of death wasclose upon me. Looking at my- 
self in the looking-glass, the sunken and pallid cheeks 
_told how much I had suffered. My eyes grew dim, and 
I began to realize that soon my days were to be ended, 
and that J was to die in that desert place, far away from 
home and friends, and that the wild beasts of the woods 
would come and devour me. 
My bed was made of leaves, my pillow was the branch 
of atree. Instead of blankets I had two fires, but I was 
so burning hot the greater part of the time with fever 
that I cared not for these. Close to me lay my little 
Bible, on my small and now almost empty medicine chest, 
but I could only look at it, for I could not read any more; 
