Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/176

 III

By-Products of Rational Endeavor

Then again Kennaston stood in a stone-walled apartment, like a cell, wherein there was a furnace and much wreckage. A contemplative friar was regarding the disorder about him with disapproval, the while he sucked at two hurt fingers.

"There can be no doubt that Old Legion conspires to hinder the great work," he considered.

"And what is the great work, father?" Kennaston asked him.

"To find the secret of eternal life, my son. What else is lacking? Man approaches to God in all things save this, Imaginis imago, created after God's image. But as yet, by reason of his mortality, man shudders in a world that is arrayed against him. Thus, the heavens threaten with winds and lightnings, with plague-breeding meteors and the unfriendly aspect of planets; the