He picked up a hammer and drills and went still farther up the mountain. Having reached the Inferno, he began his work. Perhaps he had no thought of Jael or Sisera; but he smote his drill with a determined emphasis that indicated ill things for Pierre. Jael pinned the sleeping head of Sisera to the earth. Sleeping or waking, resisting or acquiescent, Pierre's head was in serious danger, if it threatened Élise.
Zephyr loaded the hole and lighted the fuse, then started for the camp. A loud explosion startled Madame from the most peaceful repose she had enjoyed for many a day.
After dinner Zephyr saw Madame safely down the worst of the trail.
"Pierre is not all bad," he remarked, at parting. "You just _restez tranquille_ and don't worry. It's a pretty thick fog that the sun can't break through, and, furthermore, a fog being only limited, as it were, and the sun tolerably persistent, it's pretty apt to get on top at most unexpected seasons."
Madame completed the remainder of her journey with very different emotions from those with which she had begun it. She entered the back door of the Blue Goose. Pierre was not in the room, as she had half expected, half feared. She looked around anxiously, then dropped into a chair. The pendulum changed its swing. She was under the old influences again. Zephyr and the mountain-top were far away. A thousand questions struggled in her mind. Why had she not thought of them before? It was no use. Again she was groping for help. She recalled a few of Zephyr's words.
"Élise isn't going to marry Morrison, and Pierre's going to give her up."
They did not thrill her with hope. She could not make them do so by oft repeating. Confused recollections crowded these few words of hope. She could not revivify them. She could only cling to them with blind, uncomprehending trust, as the praying mother clings to the leaden crucifix.
An algebraic formula is very fascinating, but at the same time it is very dangerous. The oft-times repeated assumption that _x_ plus _y_ equals _a_ leads ultimately to the fixed belief that a is an attainable result, whatever values may be assigned to the other factors. If we assign concrete dollars to the abstract _x_ and _y_, _a_ theoretically becomes concrete dollars as well. But immediately we do this, another factor known as the personal equation calls for cards, and from then on insists upon sitting in the game. Simple algebra no longer suffices; calculus, differential as well as integral, enters into our problem, and if we can succeed in fencing out quaternions, to say nothing of the _nth_ dimension, we may consider ourselves fortunate.