The ensuing days and weeks passed pleasantly and swiftly for Darrell. He
quickly familiarized himself with the work which he had in charge, and
frequently found leisure, when his routine work was done, for
experiments and tests of his own, as well as for outside work which came
to him as his skill became known in neighboring camps. His evenings were
well filled, as he had taken up his old studies along the lines of
mineralogy and metallurgy, pushing ahead into new fields of research and
discovery, studying by night and experimenting by day. Meanwhile, the
rocky peaks around him seemed beckoning him with their talismanic signs,
as though silently challenging him to learn the mighty secrets for ages
hidden within their breasts, and he promised himself that with the
return of lengthening days, he would start forth, a humble learner, to
sit at the feet of those great teachers of the centuries. He had
occasional letters from Mr. Britton, cheering, inspiring, helpful, much
as his presence had been, and in return he wrote freely of his present
work and his plans for future work.
Sometimes, when books were closed or the plaintive tones of the violin
had died away in silence, he would sit for hours pondering the strange
problem of his own life; watching, listening for some sign from out the
past; but neither ray of light nor wave of sound came to him. His
physician had told him that some day the past would return, and that the
intervening months or years as the case might be, would then doubtless
be in turn forgotten, and as he revolved this in his mind he formed a
plan which he at once proceeded to put into execution.
On his return one night from a special trip to Ophir he went to his room
with more than usual haste, and opening a package in which he seemed
greatly interested, drew forth what appeared to be a book, about eleven
by fifteen inches in size, bound in flexible morocco and containing some
five or six hundred pages. The pages were blank, however, and bound
according to an ingenious device which he had planned and given the
binder, by which they could be removed and replaced at will, and, if
necessary, extra pages could be added.
For some time he stood by the light, turning the volume over and over
with an expression of mingled pleasure and sadness; then removing some
of the pages, he sat down and prepared to write. The new task to which
he had set himself was the writing of a complete record, day by day, of
this present life of his, beginning with the first glimmerings of
memory, faint and confused, in the earliest days of his convalescence at
The Pines. He dipped his pen, then hesitated; how should this strange
volume be inscribed?