Darkness and Dawn

ore fully than ever the necessity for immediate labor and exploration, he tigh

nder a jungle of fern. A butterfly, dull brown and ocher, settled upon a br

s, indeed, certainly some evolutionary variants. Must be a tremendous time since we went to sleep, for sure;

aside in the press of urgent matters. And, parting the und

rds when an exclamation of surpr

, so close? A pool, right here at hand? G

ood, he gazed at it with

y across it, Stern had suddenly come upon as beautiful a little watercourse as

fern-banked and fringed with purple blooms; at the b

small brook trickled, widening out into a pool some fifteen feet across; whence, brimming ove

racks?" he exclaimed, noting a few dainty hoof-prints in the sandy marg

ded lips to the sweet water, he d

and peered about him. All at once

ied out. "This spring is nothing more or less than the lineal descen

the 'Annals of Applied Geology.' Only--well, there a

wider pool

, "here's where you get

rom top to toe he scrubbed himself vigorously with the fine, white sand. And when, som

is rags, lying there on the edge of the po

in the building, there, will be enough." He picked up his sledge, a

laimed. "I feel ten years younger, alread

the elastic moss and over the pi

and shave!" said he. "Well, why not

n was back at the door close to the huge Norway pine. Bu

flushing a covey of loud-winged partridges, parting the bushes that grew thickly along

e way, crumbling lines of ruin. As he worked his way among the detritus of

ated some hundred yards still further along Twenty-Third Street, did h

wheels peering out--evidently the wreckage of an electric car--he made his way arou

nspecting the place. "If this didn't use to be Currier & Brown's p

ock at a rattlesnake that had begun its dry, chirr

le the rock rebounding,

aw, still stood near the back of the shop a showcase f

the case, preserved as you have seen Egyptian relics two or three thousand years old, in mus

he sledge, demolishe

itement as he chose

ps and refused his cash. Same here! All the money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife--" as h

rs, two rubber combs, another knife, a revolver, an autom

Gladstone bag, taken from a corner where a broken gla

re excited than if he had chanced upon a blue-clay bed crammed wi

n marbles, he made his exit from the ruins of the

et when all at once he drew back wi

a little maple sapling, lay something

p, dropping the

d at the thing he stared with

d! How--what

is hand was a broad, f