But the keeper's notion was
to be a credit to all the grandfathers he could find between the fall
of the Roman Empire and the Conquest of Peru. Those of the last
hundred years or so he wasn't particular about, but if they'd been
dead long enough he'd do anything to satisfy them. I didn't seem to
surround the idea so as to find it reasonable, but I got so far as to
see it was a large one, and there was some kind of a handsomeness in
it.
Speaking of points of view, it seemed to me, so long as a man
thought a heap of something besides himself, there was a good deal of
leeway as to what the thing was; maybe his children and the folks
that were coming after him; maybe the folks that went before him;
maybe his country, or a machine he had invented, or a ship and those
aboard he was responsible for, or the copper image of one of his
gods. So long as he stood to stake his life on it, I wasn't prepared
to sniff at him.
For a while he listened to my talk and said nothing. Then he began
and went off like a bottle of beer that's been corked over-long. From
what he said I gathered the facts just stated.
"The stream goes dry," he says slowly at last. "Therefore I came
from Spain.
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