“Oh, I pray! I pray!” exclaimed the patriarch, thrusting out both hands. “Speak not of those! Not yet!”
“All right, father. What we want to ask is for something to eat and drink, some other kind of clothes than the furs we're wearing, and a place to sleep--a house, you know--we've got to rest! We mean no harm to your people. Wouldn't hurt a hair of their heads! Overjoyed to find 'em! Now, I ask you, as man to man, can't you get us out of this, and manage things so that we shall have a chance to explain?
“I'll give you the whole story, once we've recuperated. You can translate it to your people. I ask some consideration for myself, and I demand it for this woman! Well?”
The old man stood in silent thought a moment. Plain to see, his distress was very keen. His face wrinkled still more, and on his breast he bowed his majestic head, so eloquent of pain and sorrow and long disappointment.
Stern, watching him narrowly, played his trump-card.
“Father,” said he, “I don't know why you were sent here to talk with us, or how they knew you could talk with us even. I don't know what any of this treatment means. But I do know that this girl and I are from the world of a thousand years ago--the world in which your ancient forefathers used to dwell!
“She and I know all about that world. We know the language which to you is only a precious memory, to us a living fact. We can tell you hundreds, thousands of things! We can teach you everything you want to know! For a year--if you people have years down here--we can sit and talk to you, and instruct you, and make you far, far wiser than any of your Folk!
“More, we can teach your Folk the arts of peace and war--a multitude of wonderful and useful things. We can raise them from barbarism to civilization again! We can save them--save the world! And I appeal to you, in the name of all the great and mighty past which to you is still a memory, if not to them--save us now!”
He ceased. The old man sighed deeply, and for a while kept silence. His face might have served as the living personification of intense and hopeless woe.
Stern had an idea.