“My boy—my boy! How are you? Oh, how you have changed! Desmond, my boy, welcome home!”
“This is Mavis, Uncle John.”
Sir John held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. She could see that suffering had left its mark on the old man’s face, so she impetuously flung her arm round his neck and kissed him. “Uncle John,” she whispered. “I’ve heard so much about you from Desmond and Alan. I’ve been just longing to come home—to you!”
It was a very merry party that drove home to Dalmyrnie.
“Eat your breakfasts,” commanded Uncle John. “You shall tell me your story afterwards. But have a good meal first.” After breakfast, they sat in the old-world garden, among the trees—Sir John and Masters, the two boys and Mavis, and their wonderful story was told.
Desmond began by telling how he was caught by the Light, omitting nothing, and Alan concluded the story. “Now here is the papyrus and here are the jewels and the censer. These, I think, will prove the truth of our strange story.”
“And you mean to say there is a race of people living in the centre of the Earth?”
“Yes, indeed, where we have been actually living for the past few years.”
“They are actually descended from Korah, Abiram and Dathan?”
“Yes, as I told you, they still speak a patois Hebrew—they possess a copy of part of the Pentateuch—they worship the God of the old Testament, Jehovah, the great ‘I am’.”