“Excuse me, Mr. McGowan. I shall send my brother right down.”
“Please, don’t do that. Your father will need you both. I shall be going.”
“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, offering her 72 hand. “You will come again, very soon, won’t you?”
“I shall call in the morning to inquire about your father.”
“Thank you. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Mr. McGowan took his hat from the hall-tree and left the house. As he walked very slowly through the avenue of trees a strange passage from the Bible kept tantalizing his attention. “Behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.... Then there was no breath in them.... Then from the four winds the breath came into them, and they lived.”
Half provoked for allowing these words to arouse suspicion, he tried to cast them out. But the effect of them remained. He had witnessed the coming together of the dry bones of a past. Were the four winds from the four corners of the earth to give them life? Had he unwittingly helped to furnish the dry bones with breath?
He had gone but a short distance when he heard footsteps behind him.