III

“Where did you get this?” I heard myself asking, a strange voice sounding far down the throat.

“From an Indian,” the mystic told me quietly.  “He said it was bad medicine to him.  He never had any luck in hunting after it fell to his share, so he was glad to give it to me.”

“Where did he get it?”

“His tribe took it from some prisoners they killed.”

I was running blindly around in a circle to find relief from the news he dealt me, when the absurdity of such news overtook me.  I stood and laughed.

“Who were the prisoners?”

“I don’t know,” answered Johnny Appleseed.

“How do you know the Indians killed them?”

“The one that gave me this book told me so.”

“There are plenty of padlocked books in the world,” I said jauntily.  “At least there must be more than one.  How long ago did it happen?”

“Not very long ago, I think; for the book was clean.”

“Give it to me,” I said, as if I cursed him.

“It’s a sacred book,” he answered, hesitating.

“Maybe it’s sacred.  Let me see.”

“There may be holy mysteries in it, to be read only of him who has the key.”

“I have a key!”

I took it out of the snuffbox.  Johnny Appleseed fixed his rapt eyes on the little object in my fingers.

“Mebby you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed!”

“No, I’m not!  How could my key fit a padlocked book that belonged to prisoners killed by the Indians?”

He held it out to me and I took hold of the padlock.  It was a small steel padlock, and the hole looked dangerously the size of my key.

“I can’t do it!” I said.

“Let me try,” said Johnny Appleseed.

“No!  You might break my key in a strange padlock!  Hold it still, Johnny.  Please don’t shake it.”

“I’m not shaking it,” Johnny Appleseed answered tenderly.

“There’s only one way of proving that my key doesn’t fit,” I said, and thrust it in.  The ward turned easily, and the padlock came away in my hand.  I dropped it and opened the book.  Within the lid a name was written which I had copied a thousand times—­“Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier.”

Still I did not believe it.  Nature protects us in our uttermost losses by a density through which conviction is slow to penetrate.  In some mysterious way the padlocked book had fallen into strange hands, and had been carried to America.

“If Eagle were in America, I should know it.  For De Chaumont would know it, and Skenedonk would find it out.”

I stooped for the padlock, hooked it in place, and locked the book again.

“Is the message to you alone?” inquired Johnny Appleseed.

“Did you ever care for a woman?” I asked him.

Restless misery came into his eyes, and I noticed for the first time that he was not an old man; he could not have been above thirty-five.  He made no answer; shifting from one bare foot to the other, his body settling and losing its Indian lightness.