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Syria Bradt Travel Guide Syria 2nd Edition Diana Darke
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Other documents randomly have
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 “N-no.” She hesitated. “But he must. For they are bad, and would
hurt us and take away—”
“Take away what?” demanded Sheldon sharply.
But she shut her lips tight, and the suspicion came back into her
eyes.
“Oh, well,” he said hastily, “it doesn’t matter. Only you can rest
assured that I didn’t come to take anything away. Unless,” lightly,
though with deep earnestness under the tone, “you will let me take
you and your father back with me?”
The look of suspicion changed to sudden terror.
“No, no!” she cried. “We won’t go—”
“You’d see other women, and they’d be good to you,” he went on
gently. “You’d see their babies, and you’d love them. You’d have girls
of your own age to talk with. You’ve got to believe me, Paula. The
world isn’t filled with wicked people. That’s all a mistake.”
He thought that she wanted to believe him. She looked for one
brief instant hungry to believe. He pressed the point. But in the end
she shook her head.
“Papa has told me,” she said when he had done. “Papa knows.”
The picture of that gaunt, wild-eyed, terribly uncouth man with
brain on fire with madness was very clear in his mind. And how she
trusted in him, how she believed in his wisdom. To Sheldon, here
was the most piteous case of his experience. He wondered if the
whole affair would end in his taking the girl in his arms by sheer
brute strength and so carrying her out of this cursed place. Or, after
all, would it be better, better for her, if he went away and left them?
“I don’t know what to do!” he muttered, speaking his thought.
A little sound at the door startled him. He turned swiftly, his
hands tightening about his rifle.
A squirrel squatted on its haunches on the doorstep, its bright,
round eyes fixed on him in unwinking steadiness. With quick flirt of
bushy tail a second squirrel appeared from without. He leaped by his
brother, landed fairly inside, saw Sheldon, and turned, chattering,
and went scampering out. From the yard he, too, looked in curiously.
There came the third, drawing near cautiously until he, too, sat up
on the doorstep.
Paula called to them softly, so softly that Sheldon, at her side,
barely heard the call. It came from low in her throat, and was
strangely musical and soothing. She called again. The squirrels
pricked up their ears.
At the third call one of them came through the doorway,
hesitated, made a great circle around Sheldon so that the bushy tail
brushed the wall, and with a quick little jump was on the bunk and
under the girl’s arm. His brothers, emboldened, followed him. From
Paula’s protecting arms they looked out at Sheldon with a suspicion
not unlike that which had been so much in her own eyes.
The girl cuddled them, cooing to them, making those strange, soft
sounds deep in her throat. She looked up at Sheldon with the
second of her quick smiles. “They are Napoleon and Richard and
Johnny Lee!” she told him brightly. “They are my little friends. Kiss
me, Napoleon!”
And Napoleon obeyed.
 CHAPTER IX. “BEARS ARE SMARTER.”
It was high noon. Sheldon needed no glance at his watch to tell
him that. He was hungry.
He went to the door, which had remained open all morning—left
so in hope of the return of the mad man—and closed it. Paula’s eyes
followed him intently. He made the door fast by putting its bar
across it. A bit of wood from a pile of faggots by the fireplace he
forced down tight between the bar and the door, jamming it so that
if the girl sought to jerk it loose it would take time. He treated the
bar of the front door similarly.
The clip of cartridges he slipped out of his rifle, dropping it into
his pocket. He had thrown no cartridge into the barrel. Then he put
the gun down, turned again toward Paula, and said smilingly:
“Turn about is fair play. I gave you a can of peaches; suppose
that you treat me to the lunch?”
An instant ago she had been teasing Napoleon and showing no
hint of distress. Suddenly now her lips were quivering; for the first
time he saw the tears start into her eyes.
“Won’t you go away?” she asked pleadingly. “Please, please go
away!”
“Why,” he said in astonishment, “what is the matter? Don’t you
want to give me something to eat?”
“Oh,” she cried, even her voice shaking, “I’ll give you anything if
you’ll only go away! You are bad, bad to keep me here like this; to
drive papa away—”
“I didn’t drive him away. I don’t want him away. I am waiting for
him to come back. That’s all I am waiting for!”
“But he won’t! While you are here he won’t come back. And, out
there, he will die.”
 “Die!” muttered Sheldon. “What’s the matter with him?”
Slowly the tears welled up and spilled over, running unchecked
down her cheeks. Sheldon, little used to women, shifted uneasily,
not knowing what to do, feeling that he should do something.
Napoleon, wiser in matters of this sort, made his way to her
shoulder and rubbed his soft body sympathetically against her
cheek.
“Open the door,” begged Paula. “Be good to me and open the
door. Let me go to him.”
“You would not know where to find him,” he protested.
“Oh, yes, I would! I would go to him, running.”
“He is sick?” he asked.
Other tears followed the first, unnoticed by the girl. Sheldon
thought of the Graham twins: they cried that way some time, only
more noisily. They kept their eyes open wide and looked at you, and
the tears came until you wondered where they all came from.
“Two times,” she said, her voice trembling, “I have thought he
was dead!” She shuddered. “I have seen dead things. Oh, it is
terrible! This morning I thought he was dead! He did not answer
when I talked with him. And he lay still; I could not feel him breathe.
I ran out. I was frightened. I cried out aloud. You heard me and ran
to kill me, and I ran here. And he was not dead! Oh, I was glad! But
if you do not let me go to him now—he will die—I know he will die.
And I will be all alone—and it gets so still sometimes that I can’t
breathe. Please let me go! Please be good to me!”
She came to him hurriedly. Napoleon sprang down and chattered
in a corner. She caught up Sheldon’s hand and held it, her eyes lifted
to his pleadingly.
“Don’t be bad to me,” she murmured over and over. “Be good to
me, and let me go to him.”
When Bill and Bet came to him this way he knew what to do with
them. He picked them up, an arm about each one, and carried them
about adventuring until their mama expostulated. And,
surreptitiously now and then when no one was looking, he kissed
their red, little, moist mouths.
“Please,” said Paula. “I shall not call you bad any more. I shall say
you are good and love you. Please.”
“Hang it!” muttered John Sheldon.
“Please!” said Paula.
“You see—”
“Please!” said Paula. She laid her wet cheek against his hand.
“Please!”
“Now look here, young lady,” he told her, flattering himself that he
had achieved a remarkable dignity, and looking more awkward than
John Sheldon had ever looked before; “I’ll compromise with you. You
say you know where he is? All right. Sit down and we’ll eat, you and
I. You will then show me the way, and we’ll go and find him and
bring him back here. I haven’t hurt you, have I? I won’t hurt him.
No,” as her lips shaped to another “please,” “I’m not going to let you
go alone. We go together—or we stay right here. Which is it?”
Paula frowned. Then she wiped away the tears. Whether some
deep feminine instinct had told her that they had almost served their
purpose but were useless now will, perhaps, never be known. She
went across the room to a rude cupboard, and brought from it a
blackened pot containing a meat stew. Sheldon was hungry enough
to dispense with the stew being warmed up. Merely to make
conversation to divert her thoughts from her father’s danger, he said
carelessly:
“You must have trouble getting your meat? You can’t have much
ammunition.” He tasted the stew, and found it, although salt was
noticeably wanted, savory and palatable. “What sort of meat is it?”
he asked.
“Snakes!” said Paula.
Sheldon had swallowed just before putting the last question.
Paula was given the joy of seeing his tanned cheeks pale a little. A
look of horror came into his eyes. Then he caught an expression of
lively malice in hers, malice and mirth commingled.
 “Snakes and lizards,” said Paula. “We catch ’em in holes—”
“You little devil!” muttered the man under his breath. And to show
her that he knew now that she was making fun of him, he went back
to his stew. “Just the same, Miss Paula,” he told her threateningly, “if
we ever do get to the outside I’ll take you to dinner some time, and
I’ll order oysters and shrimps for you. And crab and lobster, by glory!
I wonder what you’ll say at that?”
Paula didn’t know, didn’t have any opinion on the subject.
“They are fishes,” she hazarded the opinion with an uncertain
show at certainty. “We eat fishes, too.”
He ate his scanty meal, insisting upon her coming to sit across the
table from him. She watched him, but refused to eat. Plainly she was
still deeply distressed. Her eyes were never still, going from him to
the door, to the rifle on the floor by him, to the door again. But she
made no further attempt at escape.
Meanwhile he took this opportunity to examine the cabin more
carefully than he had done so far. A broken bottle stood in a corner,
serving as a vase for a handful of field flowers. Upon the walls were
a number of pictures gleaned years ago from newspapers—one a
view of the business section of a city, one a seascape, one a lady in
a ball dress of about 1860 or 1870, one a couple of kittens.
Upon the wall on Paula’s side of the partition was a bulge, which
was evidently the young woman’s wardrobe, covered over with a
blanket hung from pegs. An ax with a crude handle lay on the floor.
A long, heavy box served both as receptacle for odds and ends, and,
covered with a plank, as a bench.
“Now,” said Sheldon, “shall we go and find your father?”
Paula did not hesitate, nor did she again seek to dissuade him
from his purpose.
“Yes,” she said.
He went to the rear door and opened it.
“You must understand,” he told her, standing in the way so that
she could not pass him, his rifle in his right hand, his left extended
to her, “that I am not going to take any chances of losing you too.
You can run faster than I can, and I don’t want you to prove it
again. You must give me your hand.”
For an instant she drew away from him, the old distrustful look
coming back.
“I would like to kill you!” she said in a way which made him
believe that she meant what she said. Then she came to him and
slipped her hand into his.
So they went out into the sunlight, side by side, Sheldon’s hand
gripping Paula’s tightly.
“Which way?” he asked.
“This way.” She nodded toward the forest closing in about them at
the east. That way the madman had gone. She seemed to feel no
uncertainty, but walked on briskly, holding as far away from him as
she could manage so that her arm stretched out almost horizontally
from her shoulder.
So they went on for a hundred yards or so, through the great
trees that stood like living columns all about them. Every nerve
tense, Sheldon sought to watch her, trusting her as little as she him,
and at the same time keep a lookout for her father.
One thing he had missed from the cabin which he had expected
to find there. If the madman had killed those wanderers who
incurred his kingly displeasure by venturing into his realm, then he
must have taken their guns with their other belongings.
There had been no rifle leaning against the wall, no pistol to be
seen. What had become of them? Certainly no adventuring
prospector had ever come in here without, at the least, his side-
arms. It was quite possible that the madman kept them secreted
somewhere in the forest; that he had run for a rifle; that even now
he was crouching behind a clump of bushes, his burning eyes
peering over the sights.
At every little sound Sheldon turned this way or that sharply.
There was so little calculating what a madman would do! But he
must take his chances if he did not mean to turn tail and run out of
the whole affair. And he told himself that it had been perhaps a
matter of years since a stranger had brought fresh ammunition here;
that the madman would have long ago exhausted his supply
hunting.
They went in silence. Paula’s eyes showed a great preoccupation;
Sheldon had little enough mind for talk. As the forest grew denser
about them, and the undergrowth thickened, they came into a
narrow path, well trodden. Now Paula, despite her evident distaste,
was forced to walk close at his side, sometimes slipping a little
behind him. He judged that they had gone a full mile before they
came to a distinct forking of the trails.
“We go this way,” said Paula, indicating the trail leading off toward
the right.
They turned as she directed. Sheldon felt a tremor run through
the girl’s arm and looked at her inquiringly. But the emotion,
however inspired, had passed. She came on, her hand lying relaxed
in his, walking close at his side, passive.
Presently she said:
“We must watch for him now. We are near the place.”
On either hand were many small trees, here and there a fallen
log, everywhere small shrubs which he did not recognize, thick with
bright red berries. He watched Paula, watched even more for the
madman. They came into a cleared space as wide as an ordinary
room.
“Look yonder!” cried the girl sharply.
She had thrown up her left hand, pointing across his breast. He
looked swiftly.
In an instant she was no longer passive. With all of that supple
strength which he knew to lie in that beautiful body of hers, she had
thrown herself against him, pushing at him. His weight was greater,
so much greater than hers, that though taken unaware he was
barely budged two paces.
But that was ample for the purpose of Paula. He heard a sharp
crackling of dead branches and leaves, the ground gave way under
his feet, and crashing through a flimsy covering of slender limbs and
twigs he plunged downward, falling sheer.
He threw out his arm to save himself, his rifle was flung several
feet away, Paula had jerked free, and with the breath jolted out of
his body, he lay upon his back in a pit ten feet deep struggling to
free himself of the branches which he had brought with him in his
fall.
At last he stood up. He had strained an ankle in striking, he did
not know for the moment whether or not he had broken his left arm.
His hands and face were scratched, his body was sore, his face grew
red to a towering rage.
Standing at the brink of the pit, stooping a little to look down at
him, was Paula. He had never seen a look of greater, gladder
triumph upon a human face.
“You are not very smart,” said Paula contemptuously, “to get
caught in a trap like that. Bears are smarter!”
John Sheldon, for the first time on record, swore violently in the
presence of a young woman. She did not appear in the least
shocked; perhaps she was accustomed to occasional outbursts from
her father. Rather, she looked delighted. In fact, she clapped her
hands, and there came down to him, to swell his rage, her tinkling
laughter.
“When I get out of this I’m going to spank you,” he growled,
meaning every word of it. “Good and hard, too! Don’t you know you
might have broken my neck?”
“You are not coming out,” dimpled Paula. “If you are very good I
will feed you every day and bring you water.”
Sheldon answered her with an angry silence. There is no wrath
like that which has in it something of self accusation; he might have
expected something like this. Turning his back on her he sought the
way out of the bear pit. Forthwith his anger, like a tube of quicksilver
carried out into the hot sun, mounted to new heights while he did
not.
 The trap was cunningly made, must have required weeks in the
excavation. At the bottom it was some ten feet wide; at the opening
above his head perhaps not over eight feet. Thus its walls sloped in
at the top, and he promptly saw the futility of trying to scramble out.
He would have to use his sheath-knife; hack hand holds and dig
places out for his feet, and at that he saw that he would have his
work cut out for him.
And his rifle lay on the ground above! A sudden, disquieting vision
was vividly outlined in his imagination. Suppose that the madman
came now! He could stand above, and if he had nothing but stones
to hurl down— The vision ended with a shudder as Sheldon
remembered two bleached piles of bones.
Crouching, he leaped upward, seizing the pit’s edge. The soil
crumbled, gave way. He slipped back. He heard Paula’s laughter,
coolly taunting. He crouched, leaped again, furious as he found no
hand hold. To try again would but be to make a fool of himself.
Among the broken branches about him he sought one strong
enough to bear his weight. He stood it upright against the wall of
the pit. With his knife in one hand driven into the bank, the other
hand gripping the leaning branch, he sought to climb out. And then,
from across the pit, at his back, Paula called sharply:
“Stop! I am going to shoot!”
He slipped back and turned toward her. She was on her knees, his
rifle in her hands, the barrel looking unnaturally large as it described
nervously erratic arcs and ellipses. But Paula’s eyes, looking very
determined, threatened him along the sights.
With a feeling of devout thankfulness he remembered that he had
taken out the clip of cartridges at the cabin. Then, with sudden
sinking heart, he remembered also that before he opened the door
to come out he had again slipped the clip in.
What he could not remember, to save him, was whether or not he
had thrown a cartridge into the barrel!
“I’ve got one chance out of a thousand, and a cursed slim chance
it is!” he told himself grimly. “She can’t miss me at this range if she
tries!”
Here lay his one chance: If he had not thrown a cartridge into the
barrel, and if the girl knew nothing of an automatic rifle, he might
have time to get out yet before she discovered how to operate it.
These two “ifs” struck him at that moment as the tallest pair of ifs
he had ever met.
He racked his brains for the answer to that one question: “Did I
throw a load into the barrel?” One moment he was certain that he
remembered doing so; the next he was as certain that he had not.
He was very uncomfortable.
“I’ve got to shoot you!” Paula was crying. “I don’t want to, oh! I
don’t want to shoot you. But you would kill us. You would kill papa
and—I’m going to shoot!”
“For God’s sake shoot and get it over with, then!” muttered
Sheldon. He didn’t think that he was a coward, but he knew that he
was white as a ghost. And he didn’t even know that the gun was
loaded!
The gun barrel wavered uncertainly. The girl’s finger was on the
trigger that a very slight pressure would set off and it made him
faint to see how that finger was shaking! Paula had one eye shut
tight; the other peered wildly along the sights. One instant she was
aiming at his stomach, the next at his knees.
Paula shut both eyes and pulled the trigger. After a century-long
second in which there was no discharge, Sheldon laughed loudly if
somewhat shakily. And, seeing his one chance now about to bring
him his safety, he lost no more time in inactivity, but began again
with knife and dead branch to try to make his way out.
Paula sprang to her feet, her cheeks that had been pale growing
suddenly flushed, and with the gun at her shoulder, pulled again and
again at the trigger. Sheldon managed to get half-way out, lifted his
hand to grasp the brink—and slipped back again.
Then the girl, crying out angrily, threw down the gun, whirled,
and disappeared in a flash. Sheldon struggled manfully to work his
way out of his pit before she should be lost to him entirely in the
woods. But when at last he was out, and had caught up his rifle, the
still woods about him hid her, giving no sign which way she had
gone.
 CHAPTER X. THE GOLDEN GIANT.
In the wilderness which is the Sasnokee-keewan a man seeking to
escape a pursuer need not have the slightest difficulty. This fact
Sheldon was forced to admit immediately.
There were trackless forests where a fugitive could laugh at a
score of hunters, rocky slopes over which he could run, leaving no
sign of his passing, thickets in which he might lie in safety while a
man who was looking for him went by so close that one might easily
toss a stone to the other.
But for an hour Sheldon sought for Paula and her father, hoping
that through some fortunate chance he might stumble upon them.
He returned to the forking of the trails where the girl had directed
him to the right. Now he took the other path, leading toward the
northeast. But in a little while it branched and branched again, and
there were no tracks in the grassy soil to help him.
He followed one trail after another, always coming back when
there had been nothing to persuade him that he was not perhaps
setting his back toward those he sought. And in the end he gave
over his quest as hopeless and retraced his steps to Johnny’s Luck.
The back door was wide open as he had left it. He stepped inside,
moving cautiously, realizing that one or both of them might have
returned here before him. But there was no sign that either had
done so. The other door was shut, the bar across it. The cabin’s
interior had been in no way disturbed since he had been there last.
It seemed that there was nothing that he could do now. To be
sure he might rifle their few belongings in an endeavor to learn who
they were, so that if he was forced to go back alone to the “world
outside,” he could see to give word of them to any relatives they
might have. But he disliked the job; certainly he would resort to no
such action until it had become evident that it was the only thing to
do. He went out, closed the door after him, and turned his back
upon Johnny’s Luck. For, while he had the opportunity, it would be
well to look to Buck and to his pack.
His horse he found browsing leisurely in the grove where he had
left him. The pack in the gulch had not been disturbed. Sheldon
went to it for a fresh tin of tobacco; made into a little bundle enough
food for a couple of meals, and with a thoughtful smile he slipped
his one slab of chocolate into his pocket. Then, having moved Buck a
little deeper into the grove, he turned again toward Johnny’s Luck.
Soon or late the madman or the girl would come back to their cabin.
While his patience lasted Sheldon would wait there for them.
This time, when he came again into the cabin, where still there
was no sign that its owners had been there since he had left it, he
closed the back door and flung the front one wide open. For if the
madman and the girl came back, Sheldon preferred to have them
come this way, so that he could see them in the clearing that had
once been a street of Johnny’s Luck. Then, with nothing else to do,
he strode back and forth in the rough room and smoked his pipe and
stared about him.
So it was that at last one of the pictures upon the wall caught and
held his attention. It was an old line-cut from a newspaper, held in
place by little pegs through the corners. The man pictured might
have been fifty or he might have been thirty; the artist had achieved
a sketch of which neither he nor his subject need be proud. The
thing which interested Sheldon was the printed legend under the
drawing:
Charles Francis Hamilton, Professor of Entomology in Brownell University,
Author of “The Lepidoptera of the Canadian Rocky Mountains,” “A Monogram upon
the Basilarchia Arthemis,” etc.
In ten lines was an article “of interest to the scientific world,”
announcing that Professor Hamilton, representing the interests of
the newly endowed College of Entomology, an institution whose
aims “are the pervestigation into the rarer varieties of the
lepidoptera flying in the North American altitudes over 7,000 feet,”
was preparing for an expedition into the less known regions of the
Canadian northwest.
Here was matter of interest to John Sheldon. That such a clipping
should be found upon the wall of a log cabin in the Sasnokee-
keewan in itself set him musing. But as he stood looking at it other
thoughts, more closely connected with the matter in his mind,
suggested themselves. Perhaps the madman had also been a
scientist, an entomologist, hence a man of education. That would
explain how it came about that Paula spoke an English which was
not that of a rough miner.
But another chance discovery brought Sheldon closer to the truth.
The cupboard door was open. In plain sight upon a low shelf was a
thick volume. Sheldon took it up. It was an abstrusely technical
treatise upon butterflies by Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., and was
dedicated:
TO MY DEAR WIFE PAULA
“Good Lord!” muttered Sheldon.
To be sure there might have been no end of explanations beside
the one which presented itself to him first. But here was a tenable
theory, one to which he clung rather more eagerly than he as yet
understood.
The madman was no other than Charles Francis Hamilton,
entomologist of note about 1860. Not only had the man not always
been mad, but at one time had a brilliant mind. He had come into
the unknown parts of the great Northwest, so much of which is still
unknown to-day, even though men have made roads through it. And
there he had lost his sanity.
One could conceive of some terrible illness which had broken the
man and twisted his brain hideously, or of an accident from which
merely the physical part of him had recuperated, or of some terrible
experience such as is no stranger in the wilderness, hardship on top
of hardship, starvation, perhaps, when a man is lost and bewildered,
some shock which would unseat the reason.
 Somewhere he had found Paula. It might be as she herself said,
that he was her father; that he had brought her, a little girl, into the
mining country. Or it was quite as conceivable that he had
“acquired” some little motherless, fatherless waif, no blood kin to
him, and had reared her as his own daughter, naming her “Paula.” In
any case, it was made clear why she did not use the speech of the
illiterate.
And it was equally obvious that the girl might be sane.
“Of course she is!” said Sheldon, disgusted with himself for his
perfectly natural suspicions. “What girl raised in a place like this all
her life by a madman wouldn’t be a trifle—different?”
And with renewed interest and impatience he awaited their
return. Meanwhile he turned the pages of the book slowly. Here and
there he came upon a slip of paper, yellow with the years, upon
which were notes set down neatly and in a small, legible hand. For
the most part these notes consisted of Latin names and
abbreviations which meant nothing to John Sheldon. Against each
annotation there stood a date. These dates went back as far as
1868; some were as recent as 1913.
“Get an alienist and an entomologist together over this thing,”
thought Sheldon, “and they could figure to the day when Hamilton
went mad!”
For distinctly the more recent notes were in the same hand but
not inspired by the same brain as the earlier ones. In the latter there
was the cold precision of the scientist; in the others the burning
enthusiasm of a madman.
A note in the body of the text awoke in Sheldon this train of
thought. Under the heading Papilioninae (The Swallow Tail
Butterflies) there was written in lead pencil:
 To-day I have discovered IT! Immortal itself, it shall make me immortal! Alt.
10,000 ft. Aug. 11, ’95.
Sheldon turned a couple of pages. Here were further notes under
a new heading, Sub-family Parnassiinae. The words were:
I was misled by the osmateria in the larva. IT is a Parnassian. And the fools
think there are only four upon the continent! I have found the Fifth. But I was
right about its immortality. Measurement: about nine feet from tip to tip. It is
found xxxxx. Its food is xxxxx. Ho! This is my secret! Alt., xxxxx. Date, xxxxx.
F. C. H.
Sheldon shook his head and sighed. To him the penciled words
were strangely pathetic. So plainly was there to be seen the working
of the scientific brain which sought to tabulate important facts in
connection with the new Parnassian, so evident the insane cunning
which compromised by putting down a string of crosses to baffle him
who might come upon these notes.
“There is but the one in the world and I have found it!” was a footnote. And
then, scattered through the volume were such penciled jottings as:
I have named it. It is Parnassius Aureus Giganticus. The wings are of gold!
Giganticus flies at sunrise and at sunset.
I have set my trap at Alt. xxxxx. This time I shall get him!
Only one in the world! But it will oviposit in nineteen days! I shall raise another
one. There is but one egg.
A new peak for my trap. The Alt. is wrong.
The only Parnassius in the world whose wings are not white, but of gold; whose
hind-wing tail prolongations are like Papilio. This is the Golden Emperor of Space,
the Monarch of the Infinite, Master of Eternity and Immortality! For its diet is that
elixir, rising mistlike from xxxxx! Oh! I must not write it down! Not even little Paula
must guess this.
Flight of incredible speed. I have estimated to-day that my Golden Giant travels
at the rate of 1 mi. in 12 sec. id est, 300 mi. per hour! He might sail around the
world and other eyes than mine never see him. This is why he has remained
throughout the centuries for me to discover. —F. C. H.
Another fool from the world outside has tried to steal my secret from me. I
killed him.
I am Midas, King of Gold; he is Parnassius Aureus Giganticus, Great Golden
Monarch of Space. We are Immortals.
 Sheldon stared out through the open door, his gaze going over
the dead, forgotten town, and to the little lake lying languid in the
sunshine. For the instant he forgot Charles Francis Hamilton and his
thoughts were all for Paula.
A girl reared in the solitude, taught the weird, wild fancies of a
madman, accepting insanity for infallible wisdom! How should a man
deal with such as she must be? If Midas died—then what?
“Would she go with me back to the world?” he wondered. “Or is
the rest of her life to be that of a wild, hunted thing? Even if I can
find her, which is extremely doubtful, can I convince her that the
strongest beliefs of her whole life are wrong?”
In truth he found that his perplexities were but growing. But with
his jaw set he vowed to himself that if he did find her he’d take her
out with him if he had to bind her with a rope, like the wild thing she
was. Suddenly there came to him through the stillness a long-drawn
cry of pure terror. It came from far off, back of the cabin toward the
mountainside.
Rifle in hand Sheldon ran out of the house and plunged into the
forest.
 CHAPTER XI. THE GOLDEN EMPEROR’S FLIGHT.
The hope which stood high in John Sheldon’s breast was short
lived. There was that one cry, undoubtedly Paula’s, then only the
silence broken by Sheldon’s crashing through the bushes. Now and
then when he stopped to listen he heard only his own heavy
breathing.
But he pushed on, deeper into the woods. Her voice had floated
to him clearly; she could not be very far away, and he knew the
general direction. But when he came at last to the foot of the
mountain where there were long lines of low cliffs he had found
nothing. And, although he did not give up as the hours passed and
the sun turned toward the west, his search went unrewarded.
He went back and forth along the base of the cliffs, fearing that
she had fallen, that that scream had been whipped from her as she
plunged over a precipice. He breathed more easily when he could be
assured that this was not the case. After a while he even called out
to her, crying “Paula! Where are you? I won’t hurt you.” But there
was no answer.
Why had she cried out like that? One suspicion came early and
naturally. Perhaps to draw him away from the cabin so that she or
the madman could slip back to it. He had retraced his steps when
the thought came to him, running. But as before there was no sign
that another than himself had recently visited the house.
Late in the afternoon great black thunder clouds began to gather
upon the mountain tops. They billowed up with the wind-driven
swiftness of a summer storm, piling higher and higher until the sky
was blotted out.
A peal of thunder, another—deep rumbles reverberating
threateningly. A drop of rain splashed against his hand. He could
hear the big drops pelting through the leaves of the trees; scattering
drops kicked up little puffs of dust in dry, bare spaces. A forked
tongue of lightning thrust into the bowels of the thick massed clouds
seemed to rip them open. The rain came down in a mighty
downpour. The rumble of the thunder was like the ominous growl of
ten thousand hungering beasts.
The lightning stabbed again and again, the skies bellowed
mightily, the forest shivered and moaned like a frightened thing
under the hissing impact of the sudden wind. The dry ground drank
the water thirstily, but even so, little rivulets and pools began to
form everywhere. The rain, like a thick veil blown about by the wind,
hid the mountains or gave brief views of them. For fifteen minutes
the storm filled sky and forest noisily. Then it passed after the way
of summer showers, and Sheldon came out from the makeshift
shelter of a densely foliaged tree.
He was a mile or more from Johnny’s Luck. The storm over, he
turned back on his trail again, determined to gain the cabin before
the daylight was gone, to wait there again for those for whom it was
futile to search. Then the second time, unexpectedly, he heard
Paula’s voice calling.
“Where are you?” it cried. “Oh, where are you?”
He stepped out of the trail, slipping behind a giant pine. She could
not be a hundred yards away; he thought that she was coming on
toward him, that she was running.
The world was filled with a strange light from the lowering sun
shining through the wet air, a light which shone warmly like gold,
which seemed to throb and quiver and thrill as it lay over the forest.
It gave to grass and tree a new, vivid green, a yellow flower looked
like a burning flame. Out of a fringe of trees into a wide open space
Paula came.
She came on, running with her own inimitable, graceful swiftness,
until she was not a score of paces from him. Here she stopped
abruptly, looking this way and that eagerly, listening. Sheldon, his
heart hammering from his own eagerness, stood still. If she came a
little nearer—
 “Where are you?” she called again. “Man from the world outside,
where are you?”
Sheldon stared in amazement. She was calling him, she was
seeking him, running to him!
Before he could answer, her quick eyes had found him out. With a
strange look in them which he could not fathom, she ran to him. She
was in the grip of some emotion so strong that she was no longer
afraid of him, so that she laid her hand for the fraction of a second
upon his arm as she cried brokenly:
“Come! Come quickly!”
“What is it?” he demanded, wondering. “What do you want? What
is the matter?”
“You must help him,” she answered swiftly. “He says to bring you.
But you must hurry. Run!”
Again she had touched him, was tugging at his sleeve. He looked
at her curiously, even suspiciously, not unmindful of the bear-pit of
this morning. But her eyes were wide with alarm not inspired by
him, alarm too sincere to be mistrusted. Since all things are possible,
it might be that the madman had sent her to lure Sheldon into some
further danger. But there was only one way to know.
“Go on,” he said crisply. “I’m with you.”
She turned then and sped back the way she had come, Sheldon
running at her heels, she turning her head now and then,
accommodating her pace to his. This way and that they wove their
way through the forest. In a little they were again under the cliffs
standing upon the eastern rim of the valley. In the open now, he
carried his rifle in two hands, ready.
But here at least was no trap set for him. Paula, running on ahead
of him, now suddenly had dropped to her knees, and for the first
time Sheldon saw the prone body of the madman. The girl had
taken his head into her lap and was bending over him; the gaunt,
hollow, burning eyes blazed full at Sheldon. And they were filled with
malice, with lurking cunning, with suspicion, and unutterable hatred.
But the man made no effort to rise. Sheldon came on until he stood
over him.
“He fell from the cliffs?” he asked, looking down for a second into
the eyes of Paula which, filled with anguish, were turned up to him.
She sought to answer, but her voice broke; she choked up and
could only shake her head. He looked away from her to the head
resting in her lap. There was reason enough for the dread in Paula’s
breast; the man was dying!
“Tell me,” said Sheldon softly, “can I do anything for you? Is there
any way I can help you?”
The burning eyes narrowed. The old man lifted a shaking hand
and pushed the tangled beard away from his lips.
“Curse you!” he panted. “Why are you here?”
“Why, father!” cried Paula. “You told me to bring him!”
“Him?” It was a mutter, deep in the throat, labored and harsh.
“You were to get a doctor, girl! This man is a thief, like the others.
He comes to steal our fortune from us.”
Both bewilderment and terror stared out of the girl’s eyes. Her
hand on the old man’s brow drew the matted hair back, smoothed
and smoothed the hot skin.
Fully realizing the futility of seeking to reason with unreason,
nevertheless Sheldon said gently: “I didn’t come to steal anything. I
was just loafing through the country, got lost, and came here.”
“Liar!” scoffed the other. “I know what you want. But you can’t
have it; it is my secret!”
“But, Father,” pleaded Paula, her lips trembling, “why did you send
me for him if he—”
“Mr. Hamilton,” began Sheldon.
The old man frowned.
“Hamilton?” he muttered. “Who is Hamilton? Where is Hamilton?”
“You are,” said Sheldon stoutly. “Don’t you remember? Charles
Francis Hamilton, professor of entomology in Brownell University?”
 “Brownell University?” There came a thoughtful pause. “Yes; of
course. I am Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., M.D., professor of
entomology. Who said that I wasn’t?”
“Then, Dr. Hamilton, you ought to be able to tell by looking at
me,” and Sheldon grinned reassuringly, “that I am no scientist! I
don’t know the difference between a bug and an insect; I swear I
don’t! I’m just a mining engineer out of a job and down on the
rocks.”
“Then,” querulously, “you didn’t come looking for—”
“For the Parnassius Aureus Giganticus?” smiled Sheldon. “No. And
though you may not believe it, I don’t come looking for gold either!”
His words had a strange, unlooked-for effect. He had hoped that
they might a little dispel suspicion. Instead, the madman jerked
away from Paula’s hands, sought to spring to his feet, and achieved
a position half-kneeling, half-squatting, his whole body shaken, a
wild fury in his eyes.
“My Parnassius!” he shrieked. “My Parnassius! He comes to steal it
away from me; it and my immortality with it! Curse him and curse
him and curse him! He knows; he has stolen my secret. He says
‘Parnassius Aureus Giganticus’! He knows its name, the name I have
given it. He says ‘Gold!’ He knows that the Parnassius is to be found
only where the mother lode of the world is bared! That there is a
little invisible mist, a vapory elixir, which rises from gold in the sun,
and that my Parnassius lives upon it, drinks it in, and that that is
why it is immortal! He knows; curse him, he knows, he knows!”
He was raging, wildly; his words came in a tumbled fury of sound
like the fall of waters down a rocky cliff; his body grew tense to the
last muscle, and then shook again as with an ague. Paula, upon her
feet now, her hands clasped in a mute agony of suspense, turned
frightened eyes from him to Sheldon.
Slowly the wreck that was Charles Francis Hamilton, one time
man of scientific note, straightened up; the tall, gaunt form, swaying
dangerously, stood erect. A terribly attenuated arm was flung up,
then the forearm drawn across the brow as though with the motion
which pushed back the streaming white hair he would clear the
burning brain too.
Then, just as Sheldon was prepared for a mad attack of the
pitifully broken figure, the pale lips parted to a cry such as he had
never in all his life heard. It was a cry of pure triumph; the voice was
wonderfully clear now and went ringing through the silence like a
bell’s tinkling notes. The eyes, too, were clear, bright as before, but
now triumphant, like the voice, untroubled, filled with the sheer
ecstasy of perfect gladness.
“Look!” cried the madman. “It is the Golden Emperor of Infinity!
Look! He is coming—to me!”
Erect, he no longer swayed. The long right arm thrown out,
pointed toward the western sky and was rigid, unshaken. For the
moment the figure was dominant, masterful; the gesture demanded
and received obedience. In his final moment, Charles Francis
Hamilton stood clothed in conscious power, unshaken in a great faith
—triumphant. There was no other word for him then.
“Look!” cried the madman.
But was he mad?
For both Paula and John Sheldon turned and looked—and saw
what the old man saw. There in the strange, weird light in the west,
clear against the sky, were a great pair of wings flashing like pure
beaten gold, as a graceful, speeding body described a long,
sweeping curve, seemed for a moment to be dropping below the
mountain-tops, then rose, climbing higher and higher.
Higher and higher—until it was gone, until, as the wide wings
trembled in the vault of the clearing heavens, John Sheldon saw that
they were no longer beaten gold, but just the feathered wings of a
great eagle, metamorphosed for an instant by a trick of sun.
But it was gone. Gone with it the soul of a madman. Without a
cry, his old lips forming into a smile indescribably sweet, his eyes still
bright with victory, he stooped, stooped farther, his legs weakened
under him, he settled down, rested a moment, fell backward. His
Golden Emperor of the Infinite had borne away upon its golden
wings the soul which craved and now won—immortality!

“He is dead!” said Paula lifelessly. “He is dead!”

More moved than he had thought to be, Sheldon knelt by the
quiet body. The fretful pulse was still, the tired heart was at rest, the
fever-ridden brain slept.
“Yes,” he said quietly as, kneeling, he removed his hat and looked
up pityingly into Paula’s set face. “He is dead. Poor little Paula!”
She stared at him with her eyes widening in eloquent expression
of the new emotions in her breast. She stood very still, her hands
clasped as they had been when the old man rose to his feet. Her
brown fingers were slowly going white from their own steady
pressure. Sheldon could only wonder gropingly what this tragedy
would mean to her. Other girls had lost fathers before now; but
when had a girl lost every one she knew in the world as Paula had
lost now?
There was nothing for Sheldon to say, so he remained a little
kneeling, his head bowed in spontaneous reverence, waiting for the
burst of tears from her which would slacken the tense nerves. But it
did not come. Presently Paula drew nearer, knelt like Sheldon, put
her two warm hands upon the cold forehead. Sheldon saw a shiver
run through her. She drew back with a sharp cry.
“Dead!” she whispered. “Dead!”
“Poor little Paula,” he said again in his heart. Aloud he said
nothing.
After a while he got to his feet and went away from her, dabbing
at his own eyes as he went, grumbling under his breath. He wanted
to take her into his arms—as he did the twins, Bill and Bet—to hold
her close and let her cry, and pat her shoulder and say, “There,
there!” There was much of kindness and gentleness and sympathy
under the rough outside shell of John Sheldon, and it went out
unstintedly to a slip of a girl who was alone as no other girl in all the
world.
 When he came back she was sitting very still, her hand patting
softly one of the cold, lifeless hands. She looked up curiously,
speaking in a quiet whisper:
“He will never wake up?”
“Not in this world,” answered Sheldon gently. “But maybe the soul
of him is already awake in another world.”
“Where the Golden Butterfly went?” whispered Paula.
“You saw it?”
“Yes. With beautiful wings all of gold. Father knew it was like that.
Has his soul gone away with it? Up and up and beyond the clouds
and through the sky and to the other world?”
And John Sheldon answered simply, saying:
“Yes, my dear.”
Paula was very still again, her eyes thoughtful.
“What will we do with—him?” she asked after a long silence, the
first hint of tears in her eyes.
Then he told her, explaining as he would to Bill and Bet, as one
talks with a credulous child, hiding those things upon which man is
so prone to look as horrible, showing as best he knew that there is
beauty in death. He spoke softly, very gently with her, and her eyes,
lifted to him, might have been those of little Bet.
“You will get flowers for him,” he said at the end. “Hundreds and
hundreds of flowers. You will put them all about him; we will make
him a pretty, soft bed of them; we will cover him with them. And
every year, in the spring, other flowers will grow here and blossom
and drop their leaves on his place. And—and, little Paula, maybe he
will be watching you and smiling at you and happy—”
It spite of him his voice grew hoarse. Paula sat now with her face
hidden in her crossed arms. He could see a tear splash to her knee.

When the sun rose after the long night it shone upon a great
mound of field flowers hiding a lesser mound of newly turned earth,
and upon a golden-brown maiden lying face down in the grass,
sobbing—and upon a new John Sheldon.
For into his life had come one of those responsibilities which make
men over and, together with the responsibility, a tumult of emotions
born no longer ago than the dewdrops which the morning had hung
upon the grass.
 CHAPTER XII. GOLDEN EMPEROR’S BAIT.
During that tragic day Sheldon never lost sight of the bewildered
girl—she seemed just breathless and stunned rather than grief-
stricken—for more than half an hour at a time. He watched over her
while seeming to be busy rifle cleaning or fishing for a trout for
luncheon. Now and then he spoke, just a little homely word of no
importance other than the assurance to her that she was not utterly
alone. Not once did she return an answer or offer a remark.
In the late afternoon she brought great armfuls of fresh flowers,
heaping them upon the wilted ones. As night came on she stood
looking wistfully at them for a long time. Then she turned and,
walking swiftly, went back to Johnny’s Luck. John Sheldon went with
her.
They had their supper together, sitting opposite each other at the
crude table. Paula ate little, nibbling absent-mindedly at the slab of
chocolate, pushing the fish aside untasted, drinking the water set
before her. Sheldon made coffee, and she watched him curiously as
he drank the black beverage; but she did not taste it.
“Look here, Paula,” he said when the silence had lasted on until
after he had got his pipe going, “We’ve got some big questions
ahead of us to answer, and we can’t begin too soon now. After all,
death comes to us all, soon or late; it came to your father’s father
and mother; it has come to mine; it will come to you and me some
day. While we live we’ve got to be doing something. You’ve got to
decide what you are going to do. I am going out of here in a few
days, and you can’t stay here all alone.”
“I can,” she answered steadily. “I will.”
“Come now,” he objected, speaking lightly; “that’s all wrong, you
know. It can’t be done. Why in the world should a young girl like you
want to live all alone here in the wilderness? Before, when your
father was with you, it was different. Now what is there to stay for?”
“I shall stay,” said Paula gravely, “until some day the big golden
butterfly comes and takes me away, too.”
“How would you live?” he asked curiously.
“As I have always lived. We have the traps father and I made. I
could make others. I know how to catch fish. I know many plants
with leaves and roots good to eat when you cook them in water.”
“But what would you do all the time?”
“Why,” said Paula simply, “I would wait.”
“Wait?”
“Yes. For the big butterfly.”
Then Sheldon set himself manfully to his task. He sought to
reawaken the interest which she had shown when he spoke of the
world outside; he spoke of the thousand things she could see and
do; he told her of other men and women; of how they dressed, of
how they spent their lives, of their aims and ambitions, of their
numerous joys; of aeroplanes and submarines; of telephones and
talking machines; of music and theaters and churches. But Paula
only shook her head, saying quietly:
“I shall stay here.”
“And never see any children?” asked Sheldon. “Little babies like
Bill and Bet; little roly-poly rascals with dirty faces and bright eyes
and fat, chubby hands? You’ll miss all that?”
“I’ll stay here,” said Paula. “This is my home.”
And no further answer did he get that night.
As her weary body, which had known so little rest during the last
two days, began to droop in her chair, Sheldon left her, going to
spend the night out in the open in front of the cabin. Paula closed
the door after him, saying listlessly, “good night,” in response to his.
“You are not afraid of me any longer, are you, Paula?” he asked as
he left her.
 “No,” she answered. “I am not afraid of you now. You have been
good to me.”
When, in the morning, he came to the cabin the door stood open.
When he called there was no answer. When he went in the cabin
was empty.
Even then he did not believe that she had again fled from him. He
went hurriedly through the woods until he came to the heaped-up
mound of flowers, fearing a little, hoping more that he was going to
find her here. But, though he looked for her everywhere, he did not
find her; though he lifted his voice, calling loudly, she did not
answer.
It was a weary, empty day. At one moment he cursed himself for
not having guarded against her flight; at the next he told himself
that he could not always be watching her, and that there was no
reason why he should have suspected that she was going to slip
away now. When some little sound came to him through the still
forest he looked up quickly, expecting to see her coming to him.
When she did not come he wondered if he would ever see this
wonderfully dainty, half-wild maid again.
All day long he did not give over seeking her, calling her. He grew
to hate the sound of his own voice bringing its own echo alone for
answer. He began to realize what her going meant; he began to see
that he wanted not only to take her with him back into his own
world, but that he wanted to give up that life to showing her the
world he had told her about. He wanted Paula.
He tramped up and down until he covered many a mile that day.
He ransacked his pack for any little articles of food which might be
new to her, and they remained upon the cabin table untouched.
Noon came, and afternoon and evening, and without Paula he
was lonely, he who had come far from the beaten trails to be alone!
In the early night he builded a fire in the cabin’s fireplace for the
light and companionship of it, and sat staring into the flames and
smoking his pipe, and all the time listening eagerly. A dozen times
he thought that he heard her light footfall. But she did not come.
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