Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/24

6 and no longer untidy, he was going to find out that a cause is nothing but a rock thrown into a pond of infinity, and the ripple that is its effect keeps growing and growing forever.

It is a very old theme, but the astonishment it creates is always new. A man once figured out that if Clovis had spared one life that he took—say that of the under-chief whose skull he shattered to pay him for breaking the vase of Soissons—there would be to-day the same races but an entirely different set of individuals. The effect would grow and grow as the years passed. The man's progeny each in turn would leave his mark upon the world, and the result would be—too vast to contemplate. The little incident that is the real beginning of this story was of no more importance than a pebble thrown into the snow-water pond; but its effect was to remove the life of Dan Failing, since grown up, far out of the realms of the ordinary.

And that brings all matters down to 1919, in the last days of a particularly sleepy summer. You would hardly know Gitcheapolis now. It is true that the snows still fall deep in winter, but the city engineer has finally solved the problem of the pool back of the courthouse. In fact, the courthouse itself is gone, and rebuilt in a more pretentious