"My dear John Henry," said I, "any person who has watched your course for the last four or five years will readily see the meaning of that symbol. 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." "I should enjoy a walk," replied Pendlam; "but I am directed to retain these symbols upon my person, and you would hardly wish me to appear in the street with them." "Directed!--by what authority?" "By the Spirit. Some beautiful use is to be fulfilled. I see where you are," added Pendlam;--"from your stand-point it must look absurd enough." I sat down, and endeavoured to reason with him. But I found it impossible for a person upon my plane to reach with any argument a person upon his. In vain I recapitulated his successive trials and failures. "It is true," he confessed, "I have been called to pass through some strange experiences. But all were necessary steps; and I have now reached a stand-point from which I can look back and see in its indisputable place every grade of the progressive ascent. There has been only apparent failure. Our attempted Association was a necessary foreshadowing of what remains to be unfolded; a prophetic symbol. We have all been taught great lessons." "And the vulture and the lamb!" I said, sternly; "where are they?" "I perceive," answered Pendlam, charitably, "you do not understand." "It is you," I cried, "who have failed to understand your own symbols. To use plain language, then, where is Susan? She is the lamb that was entrusted to your keeping, and that you suffered the obscene bird to carry away!"