“Boy,” he broke out, “you have been where I would go if I were thirty years younger. I’ve too many children here to look after or I might go now. Tell me about the place.”
Barnes glanced up. John had stepped into the kitchen.
“You refer to Alaska?” he asked quietly.
“Alaska,” answered the doctor.
“I have never been there in my life,” was Barnes’ astounding reply.
For a moment there was that stillness which presages the hurricane; a hush of such intensity that it seemed as though the inanimate objects participated—a silence so close as to be stifling. Then Aunt Philomela dropped her spoon. The girl started. The doctor’s brows contracted. Barnes sipped his soup.
“Perhaps I did not understand you,” hazarded Dr. Merriweather.
“I said I have never been in Alaska in my life,” Barnes repeated in as matter of fact a tone as he might have commented on the weather.
The doctor turned to Miss Schuyler. The latter could not have pronounced her own name.
“Then,” inquired the doctor, “am I to understand that you’re an impostor?”