of Dodona. The throng was huge, the
sound that it made like the shock of ocean. Around, tier
above tier, swept the rows, and for roof there was the blue
and sunny air. Then the voice of the sea hushed, for now
entered the many-numbered chorus. Slow-circling, it sang of
mighty Fate: '_For every word shall have its echo, and every
deed shall see its face. The word shall say, "Is it my
echo?" and the deed shall say, "Is it my face?"_'--

"The chorus passes, singing. The voices die, there falls a
silence, sent as it were from inner space. The open sky is
above the amphitheater. And now there comes, from north to
south, sailing that sea above, high, but not so high that
their shape is indistinguishable, a long flight of cranes.
Heads move, eyes are raised, but none know why that interest
is so keen, so still. Then from out the throng rises, struck
with forgetfulness of gathered Corinth and of its own
reasons for being dumb as is the stone, a man's voice, and
the fear that Pan gives ran yet around in that voice. 'See,
brother, see! The cranes of Ibycus!'

"'Ibycus!' The crowd about those men pressed in upon them.
'What do you know of Ibycus?' And great Pan drove them to
show in their faces what they knew. So Corinth took--"

Alexander Jardine shut the book and, leaving the window, dropped it
upon the table. His hand shook, his face was convulsed. "I've read as
far as needs be. Those things strike me like hammers!" With suddenness
he turned and was gone.

Strickland was aware that he might not return that day to the
school-room, perhaps not to the house. He went out of the west door
and across the grassy space to the gap in the wall, through which he
disappeared. Beyond was the rough descent to wood and stream.

Jamie spoke: "He's a queer body! He says he thinks that he lived a
long time ago, and then a shorter time ago, and then now. He says that
some days he sees it all come up in a kind of dark desert."

Alice put in her word, "Mother says he's many in one, and that the
many and one don't yet recognize each other."

"Your mother is a wise woman," said the tutor. "Let me see how the
work goes."

The pine-tree, outside the wall, overhung a rude natural stairway of
stony ledge and outcropping root with patches of moss and heath. Down
this went Alexander into a cool dimness of fir and oak and birch,
watered by a l