“It is just a year ago to-day,” observed Mr. Kingsford to the doctor, “that you were at dinner here and first told us about that wondrous stranger, Monella. We’ve had an anxious time ever since.”
“I have never known a happy moment till you all came back the other day,” said Maud sadly. “I am so thankful that the cruel suspense is ended at last. I have often recalled the words Dr. Lorien used about Roraima; that ‘its very name had come to be surrounded by a halo of dread and indefinable fear.’ I can truly declare that it has been so with me. I, too, had come to hate and dread the very name. It has seemed to me like a great, remorseless ogre that had swallowed up two of our friends, and, as I feared, was going to swallow up my brother and two more. Yet,” she added, looking at Jack, “had I known how things really were, had I known of your lying lamed, and ill, and alone in the den in that horrible forest, I think I should have gone mad! What a comfort to you this dear, faithful animal must have been!”
‘Nea’ was by her side, and she put her tear-stained face affectionately down to the animal’s head. The big puma had already established herself as a favourite with every one in the house.
“Truly,” returned Jack, “such thoughts occurred to me while I was cooped up there. I couldn’t help going over things in my mind; and, when I considered how the mountain itself, and all the horrors of the forest, seemed to have combined against me to prevent my escape, I was seized with a sort of hate and detestation of the place. And, ever since, my sleep has been disturbed—and will be for years to come, I feel convinced—by nightmare dreams of the sights and sounds that haunt my memory!”
“I feel that I have a grudge against it, too,” the doctor avowed. “Consider all the wonderful things you have told us that are to be found inside! Then, just when I got so near, to be shut out in that way! That ‘Plant of Life,’ too! I’d have given a good deal to have some specimens of that, and some seeds. I would have got them to grow, somehow, if the thing could be done!”
“I’m precious glad, then, that you didn’t,” the irreverent Harry put in. “I’m hoping to be a physician—one day—remember! And what chance would there be for me and the rest of the profession, if you taught people how to live for hundreds of years without so much as an illness?”
This very unexpected view of the matter from the vivacious ‘budding doctor’ had the effect of turning the thoughts of the others from the somewhat gloomy channel into which they seemed to have drifted.
After dinner, the belt, and the purses, and their glittering contents, were brought in and spread out to view.
“Whatever else may be said,” Mr. Kingsford declared, with emotion, “there is not one here who will not have cause to remember the stranger Monella, and Leonard, and their friends, with grateful feelings. And you, Jack, above all; for, if I am any judge of the value of your share of these things, you are a millionaire. And that brings back to my mind the thought that is now constantly perplexing me, Who was this wondrous Monella after all? I really cannot bring myself to believe he was—what was his name?—Mellenda, you know.”
“No,” assented the doctor. “As a man, I have the greatest liking and respect for him; but, as a scientist, I am bound to disbelieve in that part.”