“I believe every syllable he uttered. The man’s face showed that he was speaking the truth.”
“But, my dear Kate, you didn’t see him at all, as I understand the yarn. He was here alone with you, was he not, Dorothy?”
Dorothy smiled sadly.
“I told Kate all about it, and gave my own impression of the man’s appearance.”
“You are too sensible a girl to place any credit in what he said, surely?”
“I did believe him, nevertheless,” replied Dorothy.
“Why, look you here. False in one thing, false in all. I’ll just take a single point. He speaks of a spring sending water through the cells up there in the rock. Now, that is an impossibility. Wherever a spring exists, it comes from a source higher than itself.”
“There are lots of springs up in the mountains,” interrupted Katherine. “I know one on Mount Washington that is ten times as high as the rock in the Baltic.”
“Quite so, Katherine, quite so, but nevertheless there is a lake, subterraneous or above ground, which feeds your White Mountain spring, and such a lake must be situated higher than the spring is. Why, girl, you ought to study hydrometeorology as well as chemistry. Here is a rock jutting up in midocean—”
“It’s in the Baltic, near the Russian coast,” snapped Kate, “and I’ve no doubt there are mountains in Finland that contain the lake which feeds the spring.”