Why did he listen, listen? One need not listen to hear the storm!
“Did the old hermit die here alone?” asked Isabella.
The silent form lay in another room.
“I was here. I came at the last, almost too late,” answered Regan.
As in a dream I saw that death-bed—the monomaniac lying in darkness, watched by the angel Fear, menaced by the monarch Death, waiting, waiting for such a friend of all the earth!
“When he had forgotten all else but his dream and my name, he gave me this. It is the secret of his life. Perhaps you would like to know it.”
And Regan unrolled a large scroll. It was yellow with age, mapped and covered with long lines and singular hieroglyphics.
“What does it mean?” asked Rondah.
We spread the chart upon the table to view it better.
“It contains the discovery which is the result of the observation of three generations. A circle of meteoric worlds and fragments is whirling on an elongated orbit about our sun.