Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/100

84 white stallions on the graves of their dead war-chiefs. Ho!" The last he pronounced with a high-pitched, throaty yell.

His wife paled.

"Good Heavens, Barker," she said tremulously, "don t give such yells. Your undergraduate days are over."

But he continued as if he had not noticed her interruption.

"I am living the days when a strong man killed and took to himself the cattle and the wives of his slain enemy."

This time his wife turned red.

"Cattle! Wives! Barker Harrison!" she cried sharply. "What do you mean? You speak as if you were a Tartar! And your name is good, sound Anglo-Saxon, thank Heaven!"

But she spoke the last words to the empty air. For already her husband had rushed up the stairs two steps at a time.

Upstairs in his study he sat down at his desk and lit his pipe.

It had been several months since first the idea that the understanding, the very reliving, of former phases of civilization and racial development,