Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/38

24 flaming on the hearth. He did not turn on the electric light as he entered and he motioned to Margaret and her father and mother to come in quietly as he pointed to the figures on the floor before the fire.

A young man, whose straight shoulders and well poised head made a silhouette before the fire, was sitting on the hearth rug, his back to the door. A little boy of six—one of Ian Thomas's nephews—lay on the rug with his chin in his hands looking up at the young man; another little boy sat on the other side and before the three lay Thomas' collie. The young man was telling a story; and a wholly absorbing story it was to him as well as to his hearers. His voice was low but eager and his hands gestured now as he spoke; and suddenly, breaking from his narration, he sang softly, excitedly a strange, plaintive song—something which made Margaret, though she had just stolen close and had been able to make out hardly a dozen words of the story, see before her a circle of simple, primitive huts in a warm valley of sago and palm with a painted priest droning before the people prostrate in fear before