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The Lighted Match

Page 19

Again there was a long silence. Bristow began to wonder if it was, with

his friend, the silence of despair and surrender. At last Benton lifted

his face and his jaw was set unyieldingly.

"Personally," he commented quietly, "I have decided otherwise."

* * * * * Despite the raw edge on the air, the hardier guests at "Idle Times"

still clung to those outdoor sports which properly belonged to the

summer. That afternoon a canoeing expedition was made up river to

explore a cave which tradition had endowed with some legendary tale of

pioneer days and Indian warfare.

Pagratide, having organized the expedition with that object in view, had

made use of his prior knowledge to enlist Cara for the crew of his

canoe, but Benton, covering a point that Pagratide had overlooked,

pointed out that an engagement to go up the river in a canoe is entirely

distinct from an engagement to come down the river in a canoe. He cited

so many excellent authorities in support of his contention that the

matter was decided in his favor for the return trip, and Mrs.

Porter-Woodleigh, all unconscious that her escort was a Crown Prince,

found in him an introspective and altogether uninteresting young man.

Benton and the girl in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in

advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they

floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind

them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young

and the songs had to do with sentiment.

The girl buttoned her sweater closer about her throat. The man stuffed

tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and bent low to kindle it into a

cheerful spot of light.

A belated lemon afterglow lingered at the edge of the sky ahead. Against

it the gaunt branches of a tall tree traced themselves starkly. Below

was the silent blackness of the woods.

Suddenly Benton raised his head.

"I have a present for you," he announced.

"A present?" echoed the girl. "Be careful, Sir Gray Eyes. You played the

magician once and gave me a rose. It was such a wonderful rose"--she

spoke almost tenderly,--"that it has spoiled me. No commonplace gift

will be tolerated after that."

"This is a different sort of present," he assured her. "This is a god."

"A what!" Cara was at the stern with the guiding paddle. The man leaned

back, steadying the canoe with a hand on each gunwale, and smiled into

her face.

"Yes," he said, "he is a god made out of clay with a countenance that is

most unlovely and a complexion like an earthenware jar. I acquired him

in the Andes for a few centavos. Since then we have been companions.

In his day he had his place in a splendid temple of the Sun Worshipers.

When I rescued him he was squatting cross-legged on a counter among

silver and copper trinkets belonging to a civilization younger than his

own. When you've been a god and come to be a souvenir of ruins and dead

things--" the man paused for a moment, then with the ghost of a laugh

went on, "--it makes you see things differently. In the twisted squint

of his small clay face one reads slight regard for mere systems and

codes."

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