"And that word of his he never breaks. Head, heart, purse, maybe will give way, but not the pledged word of old Fergus Herriott's boy. This self-murder that goes on in the name of 'science' is a sin in the nostrils of the Lord, and if only the blear-eyed, spectacled old fools that set up to know more about creation than Moses did, after he went to school to God for forty days, could swamp themselves under the ice, it would be silly enough, and no matter, but for my lad! Susan and I nursed, rocked him, prayed over his cradle since he was barely one year old, and now for him to be cast out like Jonah for fish bait. If God had wanted the North Pole handled and strung with flags it would never have been shut up in nights six months long, behind ice high as Ararat and wide as the flood. There will be lonesome days till the lad gets home—and if he never comes back! Where will his dear bones be in the resurrection?"
His bearded chin trembled, and his heavy, shaggy white eyebrows met over his nose.
"Mr. Lea, we must not cease to pray. God needs such noble men as Mr. Herriott, and He can protect him from every danger."
"Madam, don't 'mister' me. I am just Amos Lea—Noel's Amos. Study your Bible and you will find out the Lord needs no man; the best of us are but worthless cumberers of the ground."
He drew his sleeve across his eyes and left her.
Up and down the hothouses, through the shrubbery, over the stile, along the curving beach and back to the terrace she wandered, striving in vain to divert her thoughts from one fact that overshadowed everything else—the master was going away that afternoon, and she might never see him again. From public disgrace her father was safe, the crisis of acute terror on his account had passed; but now, as the smoke of the battle drifted away, she became dimly conscious that she carried a wound she had not suspected and could not explain. The ache in her heart was unlike any former pain; there was nothing with which to compare it, and she dared not analyze it at present. Through the house she walked aimlessly until she reached the suite of rooms set apart for the master. In the laboratory she did not linger, but the adjoining apartment she knew must be the "den," from the strong, pervading odor of cigar smoke. The wainscoting of carved walnut, five feet high, was surmounted by a shelf holding a miscellaneous collection of whips, pipes, geological specimens, flints from Indian mounds, a hematite hatchet, a copper maul, a jade adze. In one corner of the room stood a totem pole with a brooding owl; in another a "kahili" of white feathers, with richly inlaid handle; and upon the wall above the shelf, suspended by heavy silk cords, a gold-colored "ahulla." Two trunks strapped and ready for removal had been drawn to the middle of the apartment. On one lay a heavy overcoat fur lined, and a fine field glass in a leather shield; on the other a gun case and box of instruments.
She sat down in a deep morocco cushioned chair, from the brass knob of which hung a somewhat faded silk smoking jacket lined with quilted orange satin, and looked up at the steel engravings, the etchings, the water colors on the wall; at some marble and bronze busts on the mantel shelf, and on the top of a teak cabinet filled with curios from Crete, Uxmal, Labná, and the Mancos Cañon.
Over the writing desk and a neighboring table were strewn scientific journals, and on a sheet of paper that had fluttered to the floor on its way to the over-laden waste basket, bold headlines had been written by Mr. Herriott:
"First—Were the cliff-dwellers of Asiatic origin?
"Second—Are the Eskimos survivors of pre-glacial man who dwelt within the Arctic circle when its fauna and flora, under similar climatic conditions, corresponded with those now existing in Virginia and Maryland?