“Regan! Regan!” (Always his name first by everyone!) she called, in a subdued voice.
“Hush! The star is chained!” answered Regan.
Then they were both silent, both as strange to each other as if those words had had no deep meaning. But could I ever forget?—some secret they kept, something so great that a change of spheres did not affect it!
And I loved her! I, Roy Lee!
“Father Renaudin, if the cloud masses of two worlds are propitious, you can see the Holy Land soon, but you will never tread its paths! Roy Lee, look in that great moon, our lost home—Earth!—and you can locate London, where your fortunes are still, let us hope, in the ascendant! Take a farewell look, friends, for you will soon be as far from all that revolving globe contains as Heaven is removed from Earth!”
“When day comes we shall see where we are!” I answered, but I had no hope.
“’Tis very strange! This heavy air is not on mountain top! Where is the snow? This is a vast body of water, which roars so loudly and falls so heavily! I can feel these rocks, some worn smooth, some perforated, by water!” said Father Renaudin.
Can you imagine how we waited for that dawn? We scarce admitted when we knew that the darkness was paling! What were we to see? A foreign world? We consoled ourselves with the thought that in all the ages such a thing was unchronicled, and we mentally decided that it was not for a contemptible villain like Regan Farmington to solve the mystery of a universe!
No; we concluded in our consideration that there would be found some natural explanation.
Father Renaudin thought some tornado might have fallen. Time might have elapsed, which allowed rains to melt the snow. Still, even then——