The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-11-17

first told her the truth. Not that the good
Doctor meant to do so. The Herr Doctor
had had his attention turned to glaciers by
some rounded stones in his garden by the
Traunsee, and more particularly by the Herr
Privatdocent Spluthner. Spluthner, like
Uncle Toby, had his hobby horse, his pet
conjuring words, his gods ex machina, which
he brought upon the field in scientific emer-
gencies, and these gods, as with Thales. were
fire and water. Craters and floods were his
accustomed scape-goats, upon whose heads
were charged all things unaccountable, and
the Herr Doctor, who had only one element
left to choose from, and that a passive one,
but knew, on general principles that Spluth
ner must be wrong, got as far off as he could
and took ice And Spluthner having pooh
pOohed this Zimmerman rode his hypothe-
sis with redoubled zeal. He became con-
WINGED that ice was the embodiment of or
thodoxy. Fixing his professional spectacles
on his substantial nose, he went into Carin
thia and assembled the great Venice noun
tains, much as be would have performed
any other scientific experiment Then he
encamped on the shores of the Pasterzen
glacier and proceeded to make a study of it.
So it happened that the Doctor taking a
morning stroll over the subject of his expert
ment, in search of small things which might
verify his theory, met Mrs. Knollys sitting in
her accustomed place. The Doctor had been
much puzzled that morning on finding in
TUCK at Iue lOOG Ol ttle glacier Tile upTeSSlOu,
or sign manual as 1t were, of a certain fish,
whose acquaintance the Doctor had pre-
viouslY made only in tropical seas. This
fact seeming, specifically, to chime in with
Spluthnerian mistakes in a most heterodox
way, the Doctors mind had for a moment
been diverted from the ice, and he was won
dering what the fish had been going to do in
that particular gallery and secretly doubling
whether it had known its own mind and
gone thither with the full knowledge and
permission of its maternal relative. Indeed,
the good Doctor wo1ld probably have as
cribed its presence to the malicious and per-
sonal causation of the devil, but that the one
point on which he and Spluthner were agreed
was the ignoring of unscientihc hypothesis.
The Doctors objections to the devil were
none the less strenuous for being purely
scientific.
Thus Eliminating the Doctor came to the
crevasse where Mrs. knollys was sitting and
to which little path had now been worn
from the inn. There was nothing of scientific
interest about the fair young English girl,
and the Doctor did not notice her; but he
took from his waistcoat pocket a leaden bull
let moulded by himself, ana marked:
Johannes Carpentarius, Juvavianus, A. U.
c. $780,, and dropped it, with much salts
faction, into the crevasse. Mrs. Knollys gave
little cry; the bullet was heard for some
seconds tinkling against the sides of the
they waited in vain for the noise of the final
fall, May the Sputhner live that he may
learn by it" muttered the Doctor. II can
never recover i"
Then he remembered that the experiment
had been attended with a sound unaccounted
for by the conformity of the bullet to the
laws of gravitation; and looking up he saw
Mrs. Knollys in front of him, no longer cry
ing but very pale. Zimmerman started and
in in his confusion dropped his best brass
registering thermometer, which also ratified
down the abyss.
You say whispered Mrs. Knollys,
that it can never be recovered"
Madame" spoke the Doctor dofiing his
hat, how would you recofer from a blaze
when the smallest approximation which l
hat yet been able to make puts the depth
from the surface of the bed of the gletscher
at vrom sixteen hundred to sixteen hundred
and sixty meters in distance?' Doctor Zim-
norman spoke very good English and he
pushed his hat on the back of his head and
assumed his professional attitude.
But they were all trying" Mrs Knoiys
spoke family. "They said that they hoped
he could be recovered" The stranger was
the oldest gentleman she had seen, and Mrs.
Knollys felt almost like confding in him.
"Oh, l must have the-the body" She
closed in sob; but the Herr Doctor caught
at the last word, and this suggested to him
only the language of scientific experiment
"Recofer it? IT. Madame" Zimmerman
went on, with all the satisfaction attendant
on the enunciation of a scientific truth, 1--WE
take body and drop it into the schrund of
this getscher, and the ice-stream moves so
slower at its base than on the upper part;
and the ice will cover it; efen if we could
reach the base, which is mile in depth
Then, see you, it is all caused by the motion
of the ice"
But at this Mrs. Knollys had given faint
cry, and her guide rushed up angrily to the
old professor, who stared he1pleSsly forward.
God will help me, sir" said she to the Doc
tor, and she gave the guide her arm and
walked YEARLY away.
The professor still stared in amazement at
her enthusiasm for scientific experiment and
the passion with which she greeted his dis
coveries. Here was a person who utterly
refused to be referred to the agency of ice,
or even, like Spluthner of fire and water,
and went out of the range of allowable hv-
potheses to call upon a Noumenon. Now,
both Spluthner and Zimmerman had studied
all natural agencies, and made allowance for
them, but for the Divine they had always
hitherto proved an alibi, The Doctor could
make nothing of it.
At the inn that evening he saw Mrs.
Knollys with swollen eyes, and remember
ing the scene of the afternoon, he made in
quiries about her of the inn-keeper. The lat
ter had heard the guides account of the
meeting, and as soon as Zimmerman had
made plain what he had told her of the fall
ing body, Triple blockhead" said he. "Es
war ihr Mann" The Herr Professor stag
gered back into his seat, and the kindly inn
keeper ran up stairs to see what had hap
pened to his poor young guest.
Mrs Knollys had recovered from the first
shock by this time, but the truth could no
longer be withheld. The inn-keeper could
but nod his head sadly when she told him
that to recover her Charles was bonelesS All
the guides said the same thing. The poor
girls husband had vanished from the world
as utterly as if his body had been burned to
ashes and scattered in the pathway of the
winds Charles Knollys was gone, utterly
gone; no more to be met with by his girl
wife, save as spirit to spirit soul to soul,
young Englishman lived but in her memory,
as his soul, if still existent, lived in places
Understandable. unknown to Dr. Zimmerman