And suddenly he knew where the paper had come from. He had acquired it by an action much more automatic than buying an evening paper. He had put it under his arm with the others when he picked it up as it slipped to the floor of compartment B Seven. His conscious mind—or as much of it as was conscious after last night—was concerned with the disarray that Yughourt was making of a helpless man. His only deliberate action had been his reproof to Yughourt in his straightening of the man’s jacket, and for that he had needed a hand, and so the paper had gone under his arm with the rest.
So the young man with the tumbled black hair and the reckless eyebrows had been a poet, had he?
Grant looked with interest at the pencilled words. The writer had designed his effort in eight lines, it seemed, but had not been able to think of the fifth and sixth. So that the scribble read:
The beasts that talk,
The streams that stand,
The stones that walk,
The singing sand,
. .
. .
That guard the way