Her words were unintelligible, but
on taking the skull from her the cause of her disturbance was made
known. Upon the frontal bone were a few words scrawled in
pencil--Lucy's farewell.
It came upon them like a thunderbolt, and they took it in different
ways--amazed silence, curses, angry questionings. The skull passed
from hand to hand till Courant dropped it and kicked it to one side
where Leff went after it, lifted it by the horns and stood spelling out
the words with a grin. The children, at first rejoicing in the new
excitement, soon recognized the note of dole, lifted up their voices
and filled the air with cries for Lucy upon whom, in times at
tribulation, they had come to look. Glen broke into savage anger,
called down curses on his sister-in-law, applying to her certain terms
of a scriptural simplicity till the doctor asked him to go afield and
vent his passion in the seclusion of the sage. Bella, sunk in heavy,
uncorseted despair upon the mess chest, gripped her children to her
knees as though an army of ravishers menaced the house of McMurdo. Her
words flowed with her tears, both together in a choked and bitter flood
of wrath, sorrow, and self-pity.
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