posite memory of their faces, a
true map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular one stands
forth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things that happened
there, and also, I think, because anything in which John Silence played
a part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a living and
lasting quality of vividness.

For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some private
case in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was not
till later--the 15th of August, to be exact--that I had arranged to meet
him in Berlin and then return to London together for our harvest of
winter work. All the members of our party, however, were known to him
more or less well, and on this third day as we sailed through the narrow
opening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a gold
and crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when we parted in
London for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to my
memory, and recalled the curious impression of prophecy with which I had
first heard them:

"Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can," he had said as
the train slipped out of Victoria; "and we will meet in Berlin on the
15th--unless you should send for me sooner."

And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed I
almost heard his voice in my ear: "Unless you should send for me
sooner"; and returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly at a
loss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind a
vague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in the
nature of a prophecy.

In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was only
natural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to the
oars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our island
home, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place to
land, the depth of water, the safest place to anchor, to put up the
tents in, the most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen things
of importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has actually to
be made.

And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark, the souls
of my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves very vividly
anew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh.

In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In the
conventional life at home they certainly seemed ordinary e