CONTENTS CHAPTER I SOME F LAME AN S D A FLAME I1 IN THE MIST I11 THE OLDER WOMAN . IV A VISIT TO CHAN KOW . V A SOURCE OF INFORMATION V1 MEETING A HARD F ACT . V11 THE HOUSE ON THE BRINK V111 SOME INDICATIONS IX A GENERAL E NGAGEME . NT X A WHIRL IN OBSCURITY . XI Two HOME-GOINGS . XI1 A CHOICE OF ALLIES . XI11 Two KINDS OF WEATHER . XIV Two LETTERS . XV A TRANSACTIO IN N OXYGEN XVI RICH YOUNGM EN . XVII THE D ESERT O F DOUBT . XVIII A SPRIG OF CEANOTI-IUS . XIX A CHANCE TO DRIFT . XX AN IMPORTAPRNOTX ISE . XXI A NEW MARY . v vi CONTENTS CHAPTER XXII XXIII XXIV xxv XXVI XXVII XXVIII PAGE A SIMILAERX CURSION . . 264 KENDRYWS ILL . . 274 ETHELPS LAN . . 287 THEV EILEDL ADY . . 302 A SELF-DISCOVER . Y 309 A MIND A ND A PAIR O F PISTOLS . 325 THEB EGINNIN . G 335 JOHN KENDRYS IDEA CHAPTER I SOME FLAMES AND A FLAME THE world will conform with reason when it ceases to conform with chance. Some irrelevant person had abandoned a liqueur bottle on a spur of the mountain halfway to the summit from the sea. Some other irrelevant person, happening there in the passing years had hurled the bottle against a bowlder. Where the bottom section of it lodged unfractured amid the other fragments was a slope to southwestward covered with a clayey soil congenial to the oat. Farther up, a rounded oak spread its branches close to the ground and farther down a green border of cascara and young laurel ran. The mountain top was hidden by an ascending brow to eastward. To westward, across the caiion depths, was the long and nearly even height whose yonder terrace footed in the sea. The roundtopped hollow cone on the bottle bottom-indented in order that a gallon of liquid might fill. reputed quarts-lay surrounded by the jagged points of its glass walls. It lay pointed to a spot in the I . heavens through which the sun passes twice a year in spring and autumn. For ten years this exhibit stayed undisturbed, the lens-like top of the cone converging the daylight into a small focus on the earth beneath it. The oat half buried there sprouted into the dome and died for lack of room. As the years went by the winds sifted bits of broken straw and silky down from plants into the space beneath the lens. But when the sun might have shone directly through the axis of the bottle it happened that for years either the ground lay rain saturated or a cloud covered the mountain. When, however, chance saw fit to use this mechanism for its effect upon the lives of several nlortals it chose a day in early spring when against the custom of nature the ground was dry and the backward young blades of the oats had not yet topped the sere stalks of autumn. The air was warm in the sun and cool in the shade. A bright moistureless wind blew out . of-the north and huddled the tinder under the lens, through which, at a certain moment in the afternoon, the suns rays, with a minimum of diffusion, shone gathered in a spot of white heat. The tinder turned black. A jackrabbit bounded froin the smell of smoke, his tall ears cocked. A thin red line crackled in a widening circle and made the ground-owl hide in his borrowed hole. Soon the oak stood unrelieved in a space of black, with a crisp fringe of straw-color about its lower branches. The bays shot up like flaming swords, roaring and pouring pungent smoke at an angle through the flaw SOME FLAMES AND A FLAME 3 less air to southward. But the scrub oaks and the cascara, less oily and full of watery sap, refused passage to the flame. The time was not yet when the long dry heat of the rainless season made them easy prey... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.