imagery attached to the commonplace phrase uttered by his father--the
Endless Mountains! It brought back his doubt, his questioning, of life.
It was the inconceivable term endless, without any finality of ultimate
rest, without even the arbitrary peace of death, that appalled him. He
thought of life going on and on, with nothing consummated, nothing
achieved nor final. He thought of the black Penny who had been burned as
a heretic to ashes years before; yet Howat was conscious of the martyr's
bitter stubbornness of soul, alive, still alive and unquenched, in
himself. He wondered about the heritage to come. There was a further
belief that it followed exclusively the male line. The Pennys, like many
another comparatively obscure name, went far back into the primeval soil
of civilization. If he had no issue the endlessness might be confounded;
a fatality in his long, dangerous excursions would have vanquished the
ineradicable Welsh blood. He might have no children; yesterday he would
have made such a decision; but now he was less sure of himself, of his
power to will. He was dimly conscious of vast exterior forces and
traitorous factors within. It was as if momentarily he had been lifted
to a cloud beyond time, from which he saw the entire, stumbling progress
of humanity, its beginning hid in humid mist, moving into a nocturnal
shadow like a thunder bank.

He sat with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her
hand on his shoulder. "Howat," she protested, "you are too glum for the
comfort of any one near you. I think you must make a pose of being
black. I'd almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear."

Howat smiled at her; he returned slowly to the actual, the particular.
Mr. Winscombe had pushed back his chair, excusing himself in the
pressure of necessary preparations. His wife disappeared with him,
leaving behind the echo of a discussion about Cecco, the Italian