- Given one pueblo, he could always find the route by which the priest had reached the next.
It was on that trip that they went to Tom’s Blue Mesa, climbed the ladder of spliced pine-trees to the Cliff City, and up to the Eagle’s Nest. There they took Tom’s diary from the stone cupboard where he had sealed it up years ago, before he set out for Washington on his fruitless errand.
The next summer Tom went with the Professor to Old Mexico. They had planned a third summer together, in Paris, but it never came off. Outland was delayed by the formalities of securing his patent, and then came August, 1914. Father Duchene, the missionary priest who had been Tom’s teacher, stopped in Hamilton on his way back to Belgium, hurrying home to serve in any capacity he might. The rugged old man stayed in Hamilton only four days, but in that time Outland made up his mind, had a will drawn, packed, and said goodbye. He sailed with Father Duchene on the Rochambeau .
To this day St. Peter regretted that he had never got that vacation in Paris with Tom Outland. He had wanted to revisit certain spots with him:
- to go with him some autumn morning to the Luxembourg Gardens, when the yellow horse-chestnuts were bright and bitter after rain;
- to stand with him before the monument to Delacroix and watch the sun gleam on the bronze figures—Time, bearing away the youth who was struggling to snatch his palm—or was it to lay a palm?
Not that it mattered. It might have mattered to Tom, had not chance, in one great catastrophe, swept away all youth and all palms, and almost Time itself.