The Hope pioneer. [volume] (Hope, N.D.) 1882-1964, 1920-07-01

with a twisted knee and spine made
hideous in childhood. Under the far
ing light, Con could not steady a shud-
der at the picture they made. Half
starved, long-armed, dark creatures.
with the eyes narrowed, all humanity
drawn from their faces, they peered
at the large man in the tunnel before
them, and a united whisper rustled
from lip to lip.
"Where is my friend-white MANI"
Lexington made signs and v~ariously
indicated his desire to find March.
The eyes turned upon him grew pig
like, and the whisper was repeated,
Heads turned back, then toward him.
Hostility was like powder to the
match. They were blaming him for
the taking off of their kin. Con felt
that he was a bad omen to them,
which was the greater need for find
ing March and the Arab friend.
Now the little party lined up against
one side Of the passage. plainly in
tending the white man to pass.
"That way?"
Con inquired also with his hands If
they were directing him to go on. Per-
haps they had just come from March,
Now they made no response, their
stony c~ountenances full upon him in
the Pickering light. Having small
choice, Con nodded his thanks and
strobe past them. Again the soft
crackle of their voices. He turned,
They were going on with the torch.
Darkness closed about him once more,
His reverie was spoiled for the mo-
ment. "A touch of the horror of num-
berless generations was upon him, the
burial-fear. He could touch the earth
over his head. as in a tomb, and span
the walls from side to side. Then he
laughed Mt himself. 1t was n relief, a
necessity. He came back to himself;
identity was renewed, another neces-
sity, for new worlds had been fitting
through him and he had forgotten
much. Confident of locating his friend
or the brown-sliinned sailor, who had
gone from Alden to Buffalo in his time.
Lexington pushed onward down the
tunnel.
He thought of Helen's face-oval,
calm, day-kissed, unawakened. Yet
each moment she seemed different, for
now she was fully awakened, a prin-
cess of evening lights and clear wine
and music, subtle eastern wisdom-a
princess only, a notified flower. This
latter was Il form of torture to him
whose heart had opened. But always
there was the same pale light in her
eyes. whether she were learned of
kings and princes. or quite innocent.
1t further troubled him to find that he
could not be certain as to the color, If
they were lit with the greer Of the sea
at daybreak or the blue of sky at SUM-
set. They could be as steady as Jade,
pure in their gaze, and their loneliness
sent him out upon a tide Of yearning.
A warm flood seemed to rise when he
remembered her slim throat, and it
startled him to recall the manner of
her breathing. At moments now, with
the earthen blaciness beating in upon
him, Con was almost ready to believe
that she was a phantom; that the Cobb
had done something to him; that pos
slbly there was no Sha Mo at all, and
H. was merely coming to the surface
after a plunge deeper and darker than
usual, to find himself i'll with life. in
a room at the old club; that this Helen
was the shadow Of his unrealized de-
sires, of all his postponed aspiration,
and nothing more. Yet he could hear
her voice as if she We're just ahead in
the darkness, and he had sometime
touched her hand. The delicacy Of that
moment was still upon him. He shook it
off and tried to laugh again, to clear
his mind, but this time the happy eff
feet was more elusive.
Direction was an impossible subject
and depth another. He reached an in
tersection, a trying moment for the
nerves as his hands went out into soft
nothing. He waited, in a tension, and
heard a slow thudding, like the tread
of giants within the earth. The air of
the passages was narcotic. In think
ing of the fierce evaporation of the
desert this difference was grateful.
Well aware that he was lost, he
thought of many things old and new,
dwelling strangely upon the potential
tiles Of his own spirit. The well-rub-
bed coinage of life had enriched him
and he longed to spend. Leaning
against the rough walls, scarcely able
to see his hands before his face, Lev
ington discovered the innermost door
of himself. Soul-currents that he had
touched in boyhood seemed close about
him again. Hearts dusk cried softly
within, a lonely twilight in spring. The
air was figured with the memory Of
Bill the yellow cook, of those tales in
a magic tongue, told in the hot, thick
evenings to the sway of the ship. Prob
ably Bills stories had been Of Tau
Kuan, its piled-up curving roofs; of
close-guarded maidens in their misty
silks; of the diamonds that spatter
from the shaken plumage of a cocka-
too at the fountain down upon white
and ivory limbs; or perhaps of these