“Ma wants to be remembered to you, and says tell you she, at least, will see you soon, provided you don’t go East before the eighteenth—which I know you won’t. Well, good-by again, dear Joshua. But I’m merely running around in circles. I’ve said all that I have to say, and how I dreaded it. Good-by, then, dear Joshua—and all the luck in the world. Oh, how I hate myself! And, still it’s all for the best, I fully believe.
“Contritely,
“Madge.”
In a dazed manner Joshua looked about his little cabin, as if half-expecting to find Madge hiding somewhere there, ready to step out and laughingly tell him it was all a dream. But he saw only the dear, familiar objects of his daily life—the walls lined with huge tough envelopes ten inches by a foot in size, four tiers high, and filled to overflowing with notes and clippings; his typewriter; his much-marked books; his astronomical photographs above the notes; the several benches covered with more notes still unfiled; and in the other half of the room his cot, the stove, and the table where he prepared his food and ate it. Slowly he lowered his head and rested his chin on his breast, then crossed his arms before him on his work and laid his head upon them. He was tired, it seemed—only tired. And his eyes ached. He had worked too hard that day.
And there, shortly after midnight, he fell asleep and slept till morning called him to the woodpile and the daily routine again.
He ate a little breakfast, and settled down at his desk once more. But the printed words blurred before his eyes, and his mind wandered from subjects that theretofore had held him spellbound. He arose and went outdoors, walked for hours along the lake, moved Argo’s picket pin, then returned to the cabin and chopped more wood. In this he took a fierce delight, chopping, chopping, chopping all day long, with only a little rest at noon.
At evening, just as the sun sank behind Saddle Mountain and the gorgeous afterglow began to paint the waters of the lake in impossible hues, he remembered something and rested on the helve of his double-bitted ax. His mind had been wandering back to his boyhood, to Silvanus Madmallet, his mother and father, to Shanty Madge as he had seen her in the skating rink and afterward in the gypo camp—and then it was that he remembered Madge was about the age of his brother Lester, and with a start recalled the date. It was the fifteenth of June, Lester’s birthday—and he would be twenty-one.
How had he remembered it in his stunned condition? For stunned he seemed to be, stunned and bewitched by an unfamiliar dullness. Why, thinking of Madge’s girlhood had recalled it to his mind, of course. How stupid of him to ask himself such questions, he who always reasoned logically, from cause to effect, as a scientist should. He wondered how Lester was getting on? Why hadn’t he answered the several letters that he had written him?
Well, no matter. Lester was like all the rest—indifferent to him and what befell him. He was hungry. He would cook a bite and climb the trail to the observatory—for, family outcast though he was, ex-inmate of a boys’ reformatory where he had been imprisoned unjustly, tramp, hounded by Lee Sweet, rejected by the girl he loved, he still had a mistress who was always true to him, who always rewarded his devotion; and the shrine where he worshiped her was on the lofty summit of Spyglass Mountain. And she could and would transport him to another world where, so far as man could see, everything was steeped in brilliant white serenity. They might hammer Joshua Cole to earth, but Cole of Spyglass Mountain was consecrated to Science, and her he would serve to the bitter end. And the great night was almost at hand. All throughout the recent opposition of Mars to the earth he had trained his refractor on that planet and sat immovable, watching for the slightest indication of what he longed to see. Mars was out of opposition now, and in three nights more he would be nearer to the earth than at any time since Joshua took up the study of astronomy. Yes, he must eat a little to fortify himself against hours of ceaseless concentration.
He ate hurriedly, forcing himself to swallow food that he actually eschewed, then with his camera and other apparatus set out upon the trail.
Slowly he climbed, winding in and out among the giant rocks that studded the mountainside. Night had fallen when he reached the summit and stood, breathing hard, looking down on the desert, across which the shadow of the mountains swiftly spread a black enveloping poncho. The spring winds had ceased, and a stillness hung in the air that to many would have proved depressing. High on the pinnacle of this remote mountain he stood, and for once he felt very much alone, like Hagar must have felt when she was driven into the wilderness. But Hagar had her Ishmael!