The time of the train being near, Serviss closed the lid of his desk and took a car for the station—immensely relieved of responsibility, yet worn and troubled by a multitude of confused and confusing speculations. All the way to the depot, and while he stood waiting outside the gates, he pondered on the surprising change in Weissmann's thought, and also upon the momentous covenant between them. More than ever before he felt the burden and the mystery of organic life. Around him flowed an endless stream of humankind, rushing, spreading—each drop in the flood an immortal soul (according to the spiritist), attended by invisible guardians, watching, upholding, warning—"and the whole earth swarms with a billion other similar creatures with the same needs, the same destiny; for, after all, the difference between a Zulu and a Greek is not much greater than that between a purple-green humming-bird and a canary; and to think that this wave of man appearing to-day on the staid old earth, like the swarms of innumerable insects of June, is but one of a million other waves of a million other years. To consider, furthermore, that all those who have lived and died are still sentient! What a staggering, monstrous conception! Nor is this all. According to the monist conception there is no line at which we can say here the animal stops and the soul of man begins, so that ants and apes are claimants for immortality. If the individual man persists after death, why not his faithful collie? No, this theory will not do. It is far less disturbing to think of all these hurrying bipeds as momentary nodes of force—minute eddies on the boundless stream of ether."
The gates opened and another river of travellers, presumably from the great plains of the Middle West, poured forth, quite undistinguishable in general appearance from those which had preceded them; and, dropping his speculation, Morton peered among these faces, not quite sure that he would know Lambert if he saw him. As a matter of fact, he would have missed him had not the miner laid a hand upon his arm, saying, quaintly: "Howdy, professor, howdy! What's the state of the precinct?"
He was quite conventional in all outward signs, save for his red-brown complexion and the excessive newness of his hand-bag. "How are all the folks?" he went on to ask, with a keen glance.
"They were quite well when I saw them, but they need you. You're not an hour too soon."
"Is it as bad as that?" he exclaimed, anxiously. "What is it all about?"
"Wait till we reach a carriage, then I'll put you in possession of all the facts," replied Serviss, and led the way to a cab. "I am greatly relieved to see you to-day."
"I came as soon as your wire reached me; but the messenger arrived during a big snow-storm, and the trail was impassable for a day. Now, then, professor, let's have the whole story," he said, as the driver slammed the door. "Where are they and what is the matter?"
"They are here in New York, housed with a man named Pratt, a wealthy spiritist, and they are in excellent bodily health, but your daughter is threatened with a publicity which is most dangerous."
"How is that?"
"Clarke has decided to give an oration in the Spirit Temple announcing his faith and defying the unbeliever. As the climax of this discourse he intends to announce your daughter's name and her willingness to meet any test. She objects to this publicity, but Pratt, your wife, and the 'guides' all unite in forcing her into acquiescence."