he was looking upon an all-embracing symbol, which he had
never before seen. With a new sense organ, with centralised clarity of
thought, he realised that here, in this little model, was comprehended
all the wandering and adventuring of the human soul.

"Oh," said the chandler, opening the glass door of the little shop, at
which all sorts of wares hanging on the door swung to and fro with a
clatter, "Oh, you here, Frederick? I thought you were still at sea."

Frederick recognised the chandler as George Rasmussen, whose farewell
letter he had received in Southampton. He was dressed in a shabby cap and
dressing-gown belonging to a confectioner long dead, whom he had known
when a boy. Mysterious as it all was, there was yet something natural in
this meeting with his friend. The little shop was alive with goldfinches.
"They are the goldfinches," Rasmussen explained, "that settled in the
Heuscheuer Mountains last winter, you know, and were fatal to me."

"Yes, I remember," said Frederick. "We would approach a bare branch or
tree, and suddenly it would seem to shake itself and scatter thousands of
gold leaves. We interpreted it as auguring mountains of money."

"Well," said the chandler, "it was precisely thirteen minutes past one
on the twenty-fourth of January when I drew my last breath. I had just
received your telegram from Paris absolving me from my debt. Back there
in the shop, among other things, is my predecessor's fur coat, which--I
am by no means complaining--infected me. I wrote you that if I could, I
would make myself noticeable from the Beyond. Well, here I am. But even
here everything isn't perfectly clear and plain, though I am feeling
better, and we all rest in a pleasant sense of basic security. I'm glad
you and Peter Schmidt have met. He counts for a lot here in this country.
You will meet each other above again, in New York, at the celebration of
the four hundredth anniversary of 1492. Good Lord! Of what significance
after all, is that little discovery of America?" Rasmussen in his strange
disguise removed the miniature vessel from the show window. It, too, was
called the _Santa Maria_. "Now, please be careful," he said. Frederick
noticed that the old confectioner took one vessel after another of the
same sort, but diminishing in size, from the first one. "Patience," he
said, while still pulling more and more vessels from the entrails of the
_Santa Maria_. The procedure caused Frederick no slight astonishm