horizon,—the breaking of a new day.
It was Mary Howell who first spied the tall gaunt figure approaching silently and swiftly from the direction of the rising sun.
"Alan! Dad! Mother!" she called. "Some one is coming! There—see him? Why—it looks like the Indian!"
"Do you mean old Chief 'Eagle Eye'?" Alan asked.
"Yes,—why, it is he!"
"Hello—how!" he saluted them as he came closer. "White man still here. Good—Indian like!" He seemed overjoyed at seeing them.
"Hello Chief," and they surrounded him like children.
"Where were you all this time?" asked Dr. Howell, at the first opportunity.
"Hump, up," he pointed skyward. "Me go up—wind blow me away, then back. Lose um squaw—go find,—I be back," and he walked away.
"Dad, do you think he will find her?" Mary asked. "Poor fellow," she added.
THE sun had risen to a position in the heavens normally two hours high, when the Indian returned with his squaw. Yet days had passed, and the frozen earth had thawed to take on new life. The waters of Turtle Lake shimmered in the sunlight, adding a promise to this new day.
"How did you find her, Chief?" asked Alan.
"Easy,—she stay home,—Now I go hunt."
"But what are you going to hunt, Chief," asked Dr. Howell. "I haven’t seen a single animal since September, whenever that was. I think they have all frozen to death."
"No, no!” the Indian insisted. "Sun up—get warm—fish thaw out in lake. Animals come soon. We plant garden now, you help!"
***
"Sun stop there," the Chief told them one day, pointing to a spot in the eastern heavens. "Always warm—plenty warm."
"Well, maybe," Dr. Howell was skeptical. "But if the sun doesn't stop there it will soon be too warm. Anyway, we had better keep after this garden,—look, the weeds are coming up already."
But it was not destined to be that easy of accomplishment, for the permanent sunlight seemed to have a strange effect on growing things. Vegetation unknown in the north had grown up rapidly. Strange new fruits appeared on the trees and shrubs, ripening rapidly in the sun. It seemed to be a new earth, and a new heaven.
"Hmmp,—never mind weeds," Chief Eagle Eye gave up, "Too much work—no do. Eat plenty fruit—never mind garden."
The former world they had known was forgotten, and with a stationary sun, the hours merged into one. Time had stopped, and the growth of wild food left nothing to be desired. Yet the Indian was ill at ease.
"You and Alan,—married?" he asked Mary, suddenly one day, in the presence of the others.
"No—not yet," Mary blushed.
"Hmmp,—old Indian custom,—get married. Heap big dance — big time."A smile passed over his features.
And so it was agreed.
Time passed, and others from the east came, forming now a colony of kindred souls, the last of their kind. Time was Eternal, and Death no longer had a part to play on earth. A New Heaven and a New Earth had replaced the old and Time was no more.
The End
