fascinated me to see the sullen fright flicker in William's eyes, and
the mechanical backward glance, as though what he had seen might still
be behind him.

He had never answered this third question but once, and that time he
fairly snarled in my face as he growled: "I seen what no Christian
oughter see."

So when I repeated: "And you saw something else, William?" he gave me
a wicked, frightened leer, and shuffled off to feed the mules.
Flattery, entreaties, threats left him unmoved; he never told me what
the third thing was that he had seen behind the Hudson Mountains.

William had retired to mix up with his mules; I resumed my binoculars
and my silent inspection of the great, smooth path left by the Graham
Glacier when something or other exploded that vast mass of ice into
vapor.

The arid plain wound out from the unknown country like a river, and I
thought then, and think now, that when the glacier was blown into
vapor the vapor descended in the most terrific rain the world has ever
seen, and poured through the newly blasted mountain-gateway, sweeping
the earth to bed-rock. To corroborate this theory, miles to the
southward I could see the débris winding out across the land towards
Wellman Bay, but as the terminal moraine of the vanished glacier
formerly ended there I could not be certain that my theory was
correct. Owing to the formation of the mountains I could not see more
than half a mile into the unknown country. What I could see appeared
to be nothing but the continuation of the glacier's path, scored out
by the cloud-burst, and swept as smooth as a floor.