"Oh!" Rain cried. "But, Padre, you know there is no marrying here."
"Did I say marrying?" asked the clergyman. "No, Julia took a fancy to Lion King-at-Arms, and is engaged, digesting him." He sighed. "She has such a temperature! Ah! yes, and by the way, young Storm, I have a letter which will interest you."
"Eh?" Storm jumped to his feet. "But of course there hain't no letters in Dreamland." He sat down again disappointed.
"Pause, my son. Think it out. The fairies know all about everything. Well, how would they know anything if they never got any news? When a letter is destroyed down there on Earth, of course it comes here by fairy post at once. This letter"—he grubbed about for some time in his desk—"Ah! here. It came I see in 1806, so it's been quite a long time waiting for you."
"Twenty-eight years! Nine years before I was born!"
"So matters are arranged. The little beforehand and the little behindhand are attributes of the fore-handed fairies. Now, this particular letter is in Russian; but there again, pause, and reflect. It is a thought, my son, and thoughts are things which flash from mind to mind. I am speaking Spanish, but you hear in English, and Rain understands in Blackfoot. You shall read this Russian letter in your own language."
Bill wanted the letter, but the padre would lecture, so it couldn't be helped.
"I see," he continued, "that it went down on board the Russian scow Peter Paul, when she foundered in a gale off Iterup in 1807. It is written by a man you are to meet in Oregon, a Lieutenant Tschirikov. His grandfather, you know, was the great Lieutenant Tschirikov, the Russian explorer who sailed with Vitus Bering in 1741. He made the first landfall when the Russians discovered North America from the west."
Storm groaned, for at this rate he would never get the letter.
"I'm frightened," said Rain. "Letters are supernatural, and fearfully powerful medicine. Hadn't Storm better pray to the Sun before he reads?"