The Blue Goose

"So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise and behold a shaking, and the bones came together bone to bone.

"And, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, but there was no breath in them.

"Son of man, prophesy unto the wind. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these that they may live.

"And the breath came into them and they lived."

To MY FRIEND OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS, CHARLES EMERSON BEECHER,

who, with infinite skill and patience, has breathed the breath of life into the dry bones of Earth's untold ages of upward struggle, who has made them speak of the eternity of their past, and has made them prophesy hope for the eternity to come, this book is dedicated by the author.

CONTENTS

I. THE BLUE GOOSE

II. THE OLD MAN

III. ÉLISE

IV. THE WATCHED POT BEGINS TO BOIL

V. BENNIE OPENS THE POT AND FIRMSTONE COMES IN

VI. THE FAMILY CIRCLE

VII. MR. MORRISON TACKLES A MAN WITH A MIND OF HIS OWN AND A MAN WITHOUT ONE

VIII. MADAME SEEKS COUNSEL

IX. THE MEETING AT THE BLUE GOOSE

X. ÉLISE GOES FORTH TO CONQUER

XI. THE DEVIL'S ELBOW

XII. FIGS AND THISTLES

XIII. THE STORK AND THE CRANES

XIV. BLINDED EYES

XV. BENDING THE TWIG

XVI. AN INSISTENT QUESTION

XVII. THE BEARDED LION

XVIII. WINNOWED CHAFF

XIX. THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

XX. THE RIVER GIVES UP ITS PREY

XXI. THE SWORD THAT TURNS

XXII. GOOD INTENTIONS

XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED RECRUIT

XXIV. THE GATHERING TO ITS OWN

XXV. A DIVIDED HOUSE

XXVI. THE DAY OF RECKONING

XXVII. PASSING CLOUDS

THE BLUE GOOSE

CHAPTER I

The Blue Goose

"Mais oui! I tell you one ting. One big ting. Ze big man wiz ze glass eyes, he is vat you call one slik stoff. Ze big man wiz ze glass eyes."

"The old man?"

"Zat's him! One slik stoff! Écoutez! Listen! One day, you mek ze gran' trip. Look hout!" Pierre made a gesture as of a dog shaking a rat.

The utter darkness of the underground laboratory was parted in solid masses, by bars of light that spurted from the cracks of a fiercely glowing furnace. One shaft fell on a row of large, unstoppered bottles. From these bottles fumes arose, mingled, and fell in stifling clouds of fleecy white. From another bottle in Pierre's hands a dense red smoke welled from a colourless liquid, crowded through the neck, wriggled through the bar of light, and sank in the darkness beneath. The darkness was uncanny, the fumes suffocating, the low hum of the furnace forcing out the shafts of light from the cracks of the imprisoning walls infernally suggestive.

Luna shivered. He was ignorant, therefore superstitious, and superstition strongly suggested the unnatural. He knew that furnaces and retorts and acids and alkalies were necessary to the refinement of gold. He feared them, yet he had used them, but he had used them where the full light of day robbed them of half their terrors. In open air acids might smoke, but drifting winds would brush away the fumes. Furnaces might glow, but their glow would be as naught in sunlight. There was no darkness in which devils could hide to pounce on him unawares, no walls to imprison him. The gold he retorted on his shovel was his, and he had no fear of the law. In the underground laboratory of Pierre the element of fear was ever present. The gold that the furnace retorted was stolen, and Luna was the thief. There were other thieves, but that did not matter to him. He stole gold from the mill. Others stole gold from the mine. It all came to Pierre and to Pierre's underground furnace. He stood in terror of the supernatural, of the law, and, most of all, of Pierre. In the darkness barred with fierce jets of light, imprisoned by walls that he could not see, cut off from the free air of open day, stifled by pungent gases that stung him, throat and eye, he felt an uncanny oppression, fear of the unknown, fear of the law, most of all fear of Pierre.