It
is a map of your voyage of discoveries."
"Such tacking and shifting?" queried Pendlam, with a smile commiserating my
ignorance.
"Just such tacking and shifting. If you had possessed a good compass, it
would have shown you."
Pendlam caught at the word compass. "It is singular;--you must have some
spiritual perception;--it was written through my hand nine days ago,
_Purchase a compass_. Here is the writing; I placed it upon the wall as a
symbol; and I have intended buying a compass as soon as I could get the
means."
"Ah, John Henry," said I, "there is more in your symbols than you suppose.
You want no purchasable compass."
Pendlam rewarded my simplicity with another pitying smile.
"Here," said he, "you who know so much of symbols, explain this. _Avoid the
shores of Old Spain_. I have not yet penetrated its meaning."
"Leave it," I replied, "with the unexplained Pythagorean symbol touching
abstinence from beans. Perhaps future events will reveal it."
Pendlam smiled as before. But was I not right? Did not lamentable events in
the not far-off future give to the symbol a melancholy significance?
"Come," I said, "leave these abstruse studies; take off that symbolic coat,
that tinsel crown; wash, comb your hair, and walk with me.
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