rst-rate cook.

I went to work in the bindery again.

* * * * *

Every day seemed to bring a new "eccentric" to join our colony. I have
hardly begun to enumerate the prime ones, yet....

But when I returned to the little settlement a curious man had already
established himself ... one who was called by Spalton, in tender
ridicule, Gabby Jack ... that was Spalton's nickname for him ... and it
stuck, because it was so appropriate. Jack was a pilgrim in search of
Utopia. And he was straightway convinced, wholly and completely, that
he had found it in Eos. To him Spalton was the one and undoubted prophet
of God, the high priest of Truth.

Gabby Jack was a "j'iner." From his huge, ornate, gold watch-chain hung
three or four bejewelled insignia of secret societies that he was a
member of. He wore a flowered waistcoat ... an enormous seal-ring,
together with other rings.

He had laid aside a competence, by working his way from journeyman
carpenter to an independent builder of frame houses, in some thriving
town in the Middle West ... where, in his fifty-fifth year, he had
received the call to go forth in quest of the Ideal, the One Truth.

His English was a marvel of ignorant ornateness, like his vest and his
watch-chain and rings. He had, apparently, no family ties. Spalton
became his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, almost his God.
There was nothing the Master said or did that was not perfect ... he
would stand with worship and adoration written large on his swarthy,
great face, listening to Spalton's most trivial words....

Otherwise, he was Gabby Jack ... talking ... talking ... talking ...
with everybody he met ... enquiring ... questioning ... taking notes in
a large, crude, misspelling hand ... trying himself to write....

We ran away from him ... Spalton ran away from him ... "this fellow will
be the death of me," he remarked to me, one afternoon, with a light of
pleasure and pride in his eyes, however, at being so worshipped. "Ah,
Razorre, beware of the ignorant disciple!"

There was nothing Jack would not do for Spalton. He sought out
opportunities and occasions for serving him.

And he would guide visitors over the establishment. And, coming to the
office where Spalton usually sat and worked, he was heard to say once,
with a wide-spread, reverential sweep of the hand--"and this, ladies and
gents, is the (his voice dropping to a reverential whisper) 'Sancta
Sanc