ment? That we cannot answer. But we can conjecture. Mayhap it is this: We were all wrong; we accepted the man's exterior and profession as the fact of his marrow.
No man can lose all emotion. The doctor, was, after all, even as ourselves—he was human. Whatever may be said, we have the certainty of that moment—and of Charley Huyck.
The sun's rays were hot; they were burning; the pavements were intolerable; the baked air in the canyoned street was dancing like that of an oven; a day of dog-days. The boy crossing the street; his arms full of papers, and the glass bulging in his little hip-pocket.
At the curb he stopped. With such a sun it was impossible to long forget his plaything. He drew it carefully out of his pocket, lay down a paper and began distancing his glass for the focus. He did not notice the man beside him. Why should he? The round dot, the brownish smoke, the red spark and the flash of flame! He stamped upon it. A moment out of boyhood; an experimental miracle as old as the age of glass, and just as delightful. The boy had spoiled the name of a great Governor of a great Stata; but the paper was still salable. He had had his moment. Mark that moment.
A hand touched his shoulder. The lad lsaped up.
"Yessir. Star or Bulletin?"
"I'll take one of each," said the man. "There now. I was just watching you. Do you know what you were doing?"
"Yessir. Burning paper. Startin' fire. That's the way the Indians did it."
The man smiled at the perversion of fact. There is not such a distance between sticks and glass in the age of childhood.
"I know," he said—"the Indians. But do you know how it was done; the why—why the paper began to blaze?"
"Yessir."
"All right, explain."
The boy looked up at him. He was a city boy and used to the streets. Here was some old highbrow challenging his wisdom. Of course he knew.
"It's the sun."
"There," laughed the man. "Of course. You said you knew, but you don't. Why doesn't the sun, without the glass, burn the paper? Tell me that."
The boy was still looking up at him; he saw that the man was not like the others on the street. It may be that the strange intimacy kindled into being at that moment. Certainly it was a strange unbending for the doctor.
"It would if it was hot enough or you could get enough of it together."
"Ah! Then tbat is whet the glass is for, is it?"
"Yessir."
"Concentration?"
"Con I don't know, sir. But it's the sun. She's sure some bot. I know a lot about the sun, sir. I've studied it with the glass. The glass picks up all the rays and puts them in one hole and that's what burns the paper.
"It's lots of fun. I'd like to have a bigger one; but it's all I've got. Why, do you know, if I had a glass big enough and a place to stand, I'd burn up the earth?"
The old man laughed. "Why, Archimides! I thought you were dead."
"My name ain't Archimedes. It's Charley Huyck."
Again the old man laughed.
"Oh, is it? Well, that's a good name, too. And if you keep on you'll make it famous as the name of the other." Wherein he was foretelling history. "Where do you live?"
The boy was still looking. Ordinarily he would not have told, but he motioned back with his thumb.
"I don't live; I room over on Brennan Street."
"Oh, I see. You room. Where's your mother?"
"Search me; I never saw her."
"I see; and your father?"
"How do I know. He went floating when I was four years old."
"Floating?"
"Yessir—to sea."
"So your mother's gone and your father's floating. Archimedes is adrift. You go to school?"
"Yessir."
"What reader?"
"No reader. Sixth grade.
"I see. What school?"
"School Twenty-six. Say, it's hot. I can't stand here all day. I've got to sell my papers."
The man pulled out a purse.
"I'll take the lot," he said. Then kindly: "My boy, I would like to have you go with me."
It was a strange moment. A little thing with the fates looking on. When destiny plays she picks strange moments. This was one. Charley Huyck went with Dr. Bobold.
CHAPTEB II.
THE POISON PALL.
We all of us remember that fatal day when the news startled all of Oakland. No one can forget it. At first it read like a newspaper hoax, in spite of the oft-proclaimed veracity of the press, and we were inclined to laughter. 'Twixt wonder at the story and its impossibilities we were not a little enthused at the nerve of the man who put it over.
It was in the days of dry reading. The world had grown populous and of well-fed content. Our soap-box artists had come to the point at last where they preached, not disaster, but a full-bellied thanks for the millennium that was here. A period of Utopian quietness—no villain around the corner; no man to covet the ox of his neighbor.
Quiet reading, you'll admit. Those were the days of the millennium. Nothing ever happened. Here's hoping they never come again. And then:
Honestly, we were not to blame for bestowing blessing out of our hearts upon that newspaperman. Even if it were a hoax, it was at least something.
At high noon. The clock in the city hall had just struck the hour that held the post 'twixt a.m. and p.m., a hot day with a sky that was clear and azure; a quiet day of serene peace and contentment. A strange and a portent moment. Looking back and over the miracle we may conjecture that it was the clearness of the atmospbere and the brightness of the sun that helped to the impact of the disaster. Knowing what we know now we can appreciate the impulse of natural phenomena. It was not a miracle.
