Ten minutes later Marian was chattering to Attatak:
“The queerest place you ever saw; and the strangest old gentleman. But really, I think he is a dear.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE BARRIER
The curiosity of the two girls knew no bounds as they neared the strange abode. Who was this man? Why did he live here all by himself? How had he brought his pipe organ to this remote spot? Whence had come those peculiar skylights through which the yellow light gleamed? Whence came the power for those electric lights? How had this strange man known of their coming? Or had he known? Had he been expecting someone else and had he, as a perfect host, pretended it was Marian he had known to be at the door? These, and many other questions, flashed through Marian’s alert mind as she guided her deer over the remaining distance and up to the entrance to the cave-like structure.
Lights flashed on here and there as they passed inside. A long corridor, walled on either side by hewn logs, led to a stall-like room where was food in abundance for their reindeer, and, what was better still, perfect protection from any night prowler.
Marian was wondering what sort of meal was being prepared for them when they were at last led into the large room. Here, on the side opposite the pipe organ, great logs crackled merrily in a fireplace half as wide as the room itself.
After taking their fur parkas, the host motioned them to seats beside the fire. There, charmed by the drowsy warmth, Marian experienced great difficulty in keeping awake. Strange fancies floated through her mind. She fancied she was aboard a ship at sea; the walls about her were the walls of her state-room; the huge beams above, the ship’s beams; the strange cupola affairs above, the lights to her cabin.
As she shook herself free from this fancy, she realized that aside from the fireplace, the inside of the room was very like a cabin of a high class schooner.
“It must all come from some vessel,” she reasoned. “Even the lighting fixtures look as if they had been taken from a ship. I wonder what ship, and why?”
She thought of stories she had read of beach combers who wrecked ships by displaying fake shore lights on stormy nights that they might gather the wreckage from the beach. For a moment she fancied this bearded patriarch playing such a role. Finding this too absurd even for fancy, she shook herself free from it.