“The Garden of Eden—or they call it Paradise, too—but that lies where the two rivers fall into a third, in the East! That is quite plainly written. Consequently what you read there is false teaching.”
“It’s at the North Pole, God’s truth it is!” said the master, who was inclined to be a free-thinker; “God’s truth, I tell you! The other’s just a silly superstition.”
Bjerregrav maintained an angry silence. He sat for some time bending low in his chair, his eyes roaming anywhere so that they did not meet another’s. “Yes, yes,” he said, in a low voice; “everybody thinks something new in order to make himself remarkable, but no one can alter the grave.”
Master Andres wriggled impatiently to and fro; he could change his mood like a woman. Bjerregrav’s presence began to distress him. “Now, I’ve learned to conjure up spirits; will Bjerregrav make the experiment?” he said suddenly.
“No, not at any price!” said the old man, smiling uneasily.
But the master pointed, with two fingers, at his blinking eyes, and gazed at him, while he uttered the conjuration.
“In the name of the Blood, in the name of the Sap, in the name of all the Humors of the Body, the good and the bad alike, and in the name of the Ocean,” he murmured, crouching like a tom-cat.
“Stop it, I tell you! Stop it! I won’t have it!” Bjerregrav was hanging helplessly between his crutches, swinging to and fro, with an eye to the door, but he could not wrest himself away from the enchantment. Then, desperately, he struck down the master’s conjuring hand, and profited by the interruption of the incantation to slip away.
The master sat there blowing upon his hand. “He struck out properly,” he said, in surprise, turning his reddened hand with the palm inward.
Little Nikas did not respond. He was not superstitious, but he did not like to hear ridicule cast upon the reality of things.