“Veil, you don’t seem likes von silly girl, und I vill dry you; put you moost pe very schteady und batient, und but down shust vhat I say.  Von leedle schlip, und I vas all vrong in mine vigures.  Von preadth off hair down here ish oh—­so vide oop dere.  Und now, gome, I tells you apout der schpots—­der sun schpots,” and with many odd gesticulations and contortions of his quaint visage he described the terrific cyclones that were sweeping over the surface of the sun at that time, and whose corresponding perturbations in the astronomer’s mind had so exasperated his wife.  She and the sick child were now sleeping, and the other children, warned by the threatening finger of the father, played quietly in a corner.  It was an odd place to conjure up images of whirling storms of fire so appallingly vast that the great earth, if dropped into one of them, would be fused instantly like a lump of ore in a blast furnace; but the grotesque little man was so earnest, so uncouth, yet forcible, in his suggestions as he whirled his arms around to indicate the vast, resistless sweep of the unimaginable forces working their wild will millions of miles away, that their truth and reality grew painfully vivid to the young girl, and she trembled and shuddered.  The roar of the wildest storm, he told her, and the bellowing of mountainous waves combined, would be but a murmur compared with the far-reaching thunder of a sun hurricane as it swept along hundreds of times faster than clouds are ever driven by an earthly tornado.  There was nothing in her nature which led her to share in his almost fierce delight in the far-away disturbances, and he suddenly stopped and said kindly, “Vy I vrighten you mit sooch pig gommotions?  You shust von leedle schild off a voman; und I likes you pegause you haf prain so you see und know vat I say.  You see him too mooch, und so you dremble.  Dot’s goot.  If you vas silly you vould giggle.  Der schpots ish a goot way offen, und vill nefer virl you away; und next dime I dells you someding schmooth und britty.”

Mildred was glad to hasten through the gathering dusk to her own natural and homelike abode, for the old man’s strong descriptions and vivid manner had oppressed her with a vague terror, and it was a long time before she could escape from the spell of his words.  Indeed they followed her into her dreams, and in one of these dreadful visions she imagined herself shot by the old astronomer through his telescope straight into the centre of a “sun schpot.”  Whom should she find there in her uncurbed imagination but Roger Atwood?  He seemed to be standing still, and he coolly remarked that “a man had no business to be whirled about by any force in the universe.”  She, however, was carried millions of miles away—­a fact she did not so much regret, even in her dream, since he was left behind.

CHAPTER XXIV

ROGER REAPPEARS