X

"By my side or back of me, Eve following,Or in front, and I following her, just the same.

"By my side or back of me, Eve following,

Or in front, and I following her, just the same.

Like him, too:

"Content with the present and content with the past,

yet lassoing the past and the present with the future!"

Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine."

"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself—"

He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. "'With all your getting, get understanding.' 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' God isI am."

The sun struck through the western window, the fire burned, the room was lighted and warmed. Flame and stirring air made a low singing.

The next day Drew came back. Curtin, seated on the porch, saw him cross the river and ride up by the cedars. Shutting his book, he descended the steps to meet him. "Good day, Drew! Glad to see you back! Nothing wrong?"

Drew dismounted. "No. I wanted to talk to Mr. Linden."

Jim, coming around the house, took the horse. "He's out somewhere on the place," said Curtin. "Miss Land, too. But they will be back by twelve. Did you ride from Rock Mountain this morning?"

"Yes. It's not so far once you know the way."

He took the chair that Curtin hospitably pushed forward, and sat apparently in a brown study, while the other speculated. At last said Drew: "This is a good, big farm with room, I shouldn't be surprised, for another worker. At any rate, I've ridden over to ask Mr. Linden to employ me."

"Do you like farming better than forestry?"

"I like it better plus some other things." Hiseyes swept the hills that shut in the vale. "There is rich forest here. Any woodland that he has I could cut and replant. I know something of farming, too, and I can learn more. I'd give good work in return for the other things that they can teach me, and that I want."

He regarded Curtin with brooding eyes. "Ever since I could remember I have been beset by the past. A man told me once that I was conscious there, but hadn't co-ordinated it with the present and the future. It was some time ago, and he went away at once and I never found his like again—until I came here. I don't think there are many of them, living at any one time. The only wisdom I've got is the wisdom of going where I think I may find help."

"How about Randall?"

"I'm very fond of Randall. But he can't help me here, nor I him. He thinks it's just my 'queerness.' There's a man in Washington who will be mighty glad to get my job. He's a friend, too, of Randall's. I want to stay here for a year. Then I may go foresting again with Randall. I don't want to lose him. If Mr. Linden can't use another man this winter perhaps he will take me in the spring. In that case I'll go, and come again. I've talked it all out with Malcolm Smith, our chief at Rock Mountain. Brown in Washington will come down right away."

At twelve appeared Linden. He stood in thehall door. "Is it you, Drew? I will be down in a moment to shake hands." They heard his step going up to his room. "Blind, and not blind!" said Curtin. "There's some profound development of sensibility."

"I am not a scholar," said Drew. "I haven't got the names to give to things. That's a part of my need."

Marget and Miss Darcy came up from the river path. They had been, it seemed, to the overseer's house. Marget gave her hand to Drew. "I am glad to see you again!" There was no surprise in her warm and happy voice. "Your room is all ready for you."

They had dinner. When it was over Drew went with Linden into his study. The three others lingered a little in the pleasant, wide hall. The day was again right October; amber and garnet and sapphire; balm with nothing of lethargy.

Said Curtin, "When we come and come, what do you do at last?"

Marget laughed. "Oh, you come and go! You never really go, you know! But you have to take your bodies here and there over earth. But once come, we keep you and you keep us!"

"You know people all over the earth?"

"Yes."

"Do they write?"

"Oh, now one and now another writes! But we hardly need letters. That is, they are needed, of course, for minute information, fornews of bodily movement. But there is communion whether we write or not."

Marget returned to the dining room to talk with Zinia. Anna Darcy went up to her chamber for her rest, and Curtin took his book to the porch.

The books at Sweet Rocket. He fell to pondering them. There were, perhaps, five thousand, not in one room, but up and down. Many were old, and many neither old nor new, and many new. They seemed to touch all subjects.

Curtin, pondering, going deeper and deeper, fell into some border country of Reality. With swiftness, with electric shock, he touched, not thousands of leaves of paper printed over, but conscious, intelligent, and powerful life. Or rather, it seemed to touch, to descend upon him, to well through him, coming down, coming from within, occupying space internal to all this tranquil, outer, October space. It was presence, it was personality, overwhelming. Books! What were true books? Will, Desire, Intelligence, living, active, not unclothed or unbodied, living Presence, present Activity, being in mass, active being, present and active here in this valley and present and active elsewhere, present and active throughout he knew not what infinity! He felt again that wide and deep shock of reality. The world lived!—had always lived—only he had not known it.

Vigor streamed into vein and nerve. Hesprang to his feet, and, leaving the porch, moved down past the cedars to the river path, and along it. "It is not Richard Linden and Marget Land, nor the one nor the other! It is all of us. It is the Whole. The Whole has found them and is bringing them in accord." He felt exquisitely a touch of bliss. "It will bring me in accord, too. Drew and Miss Darcy and me—and many others." He felt a satisfaction such as he had never dreamed. "All others. One by one, all accorded, all remembered. The Already Remembered, forever increasing in strength, gathering, drawing, the scattered and fragmentary and incipient!"

He walked, hardly knowing that he walked. "Goodness and largeness! The dawn of them is synchronous with the dawn of Allness. All our words, mercy, justice, love, wisdom, power, joy, are but terms for the natural, habitual feeling of the One who is Whole. It is not that they are 'virtues'! They are the hue and tone and sense of health!"

He went up the river as far as the overseer's house. Here, upon the bench built around the sycamore, he found old Mr. Morrowcombe, who had stayed over with the Carters. In his old brown clothes, with hair and long beard, pale as the pale patches of the sycamore trunk and boughs, leaning forward upon his stick, he looked, as it were, the huge old tree come forth into human form.

Curtin sat down beside this old man. The cane upon which the elder leaned was now close to his eye and he saw that it was covered with finely cut words. Thick, and shaped like a shepherd's crook, the graving ran all over it. "May I look?"

"Surely!" said Mr. Morrowcombe, and gave it into his hand. "The year I was in prison at Camp Chase I carved around it the twenty-third psalm."

Curtin examined the quite beautifully done work. "Trust and Consolation in your hand—walking with them for fifty years!" He sat musing.

Mr. Morrowcombe's old, gentle voice began like the zephyr in the sycamore, whose beginning you could hardly guess. "Yes, sir! That staff's me now. Just as a good dog that goes with you gets to be you. It's helped me, week days and Sundays; that staff I made myself. I made it myself, and I didn't make it. I didn't make the tree that grew it and I didn't make the psalm; nor David that made the psalm. But I cut the staff from the tree and I carved the words there. So I reckon I have my part."

"You cut it in prison?"

"Do you see that piece just thar?" The old finger traced the line. "'Thou settest me a table in the presence of mine enemies.' I cut that deep and fierce!"

He looked at the river and then again atCurtin. "Now, whatever it means, I know it doesn't mean what then I wanted it to mean!"

His old, gentle face grew meditative, contemplative. A more tranquil form and face it would have been hard to find. "I kind of sense the meaning, but I can't put it into words. But when you feel at last with folks and things you can't feel against them. When I was young I must have hated a lot of folk! I don't now."

"What is your healing herb?"

"Put yourself in his place. Don't oust him from the place, but understand him. Flow into him deep! Then you'll find that there is Something inside or above you and him which understands and straightens out both of you. Next thing you find is that you haven't got any real controversy."

"Do you call that something God?"

"That's what I call it. I used to think that youhadto call it God. I don't now. But it's a mighty good word! We've hallowed it. It's the biggest word we've got."

"Mr. Morrowcombe, when we join God, don't you think we shall say 'I'?"

"Thatwill say 'I.' Yes."

They sat gazing at the river and the colored hills. "Ain't this a lovely place?" said Mr. Morrowcombe. "It's like Beulah Land!"

"Do you ever talk to Mr. Linden?"

"Surely! Him and Marget Land. They're of those in our time who are remembered early."

He glided into one of his gentle silences. Curtin pondered that matter of re-membering, re-collecting, re-storing.

Said Mr. Morrowcombe, "I knew Marget Land when she was a little girl and came to Sunday school. She was baptized in our church, but she ain't now one of our church members. That used to grieve and puzzle me—make me a little angry, too, I reckon! Now I don't bother about it. She's in the Living Church, all right."

He looked up into the bronze and silver sycamore. "I've sat on this bench in old Major Linden's time, when John Land was overseer and lived in the house yonder. His wife, Elizabeth, was just the salt of the earth. Those children used to be playing around this tree. I remember Marget, a bare-legged, big-eyed little thing. She's sat by me often on this bench and made me tell her stories. Now it seems a long time ago, and now it seems yesterday!"

His voice sank again into the October sunshiny stillness. His lips closed, but Curtin felt him speaking on in thought and consciousness. It came to him, in another of those revelational flashings: "That is the ultra-violet of speech, the high, subtle, inaudible, continual speech! When we begin to catch it, when we begin to hear thought—" He felt again the shock of going together, of rivers pouring into ocean.

Mr. Morrowcombe's lips parted. "The war turned me serious, and I found religion two yearsafter the surrender. I'd tell her Bible stories. I had a kind of gift that-a-way. Roger Carter, that's my nephew as well as my son-in-law, has got the same gift, though it ain't always Bible stories that he tells—except I reckon as all true stories are Bible stories! I used to tell her about David and Jonathan, and Joseph and his brethren, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in Bethany.... Mary and Martha in yourself, and Lazarus who was long dead but could be raised, and Christ, who could judge and portion and raise, all in yourself! She used to listen, sitting just there. She had mind then, and she's got mind now—more'n I have in a lot of ways. She and him. Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you love to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I was thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little thing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'—or 'about Bethlehem,' as it might be."

With distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to feel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and smiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a child's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of knowledge. If this tree, this place, were strongly in a consciousness, in a memory, surely then that conscious spirit itself might in somesort be felt here! At any rate, he was aware of Marget, though to all outward senses appeared only the warm-colored October air. He had again the sense of etheric life. He lost it. It was so bright, it was so transient! The unquenchable desire was to bring it lasting.

He presently walked back to Sweet Rocket House. Drew was on the porch. "I'm going to stay. I'll write to Brown, and ride to Rock Mountain to-morrow to tell Mr. Smith and Randall, and pack up my things."

The next day Drew returned to Rock Mountain to make his arrangements. "Why not ride with him?" Linden looked at Curtin. "There is a fair trail. You have an extraordinarily fine view from the top."

Drew urged it likewise. "But I haven't a horse."

"Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let you have her."

Drew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock Mountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the southern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the two kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree left it for a just discernible track. "This is where we changed, Randall and I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were going to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead."

The trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There was now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was gold or red or russet. Moreover, theearlier trees to turn were fast flinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the sunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin rode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world. "Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it because I have been—and surely Ihavebeen—in all the forests of the world? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests, because in time they are the nearer."

For a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own breathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low speech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings, tap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the heavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. "My mother died when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I remember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience ofparents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my mother and my father—or with my grandparents—or my ancestors generally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done this way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that you are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After all, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name and your experience under your old names—their names. And alike, what are they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include and include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this cleaving point that is talking to you. Iremember."

"Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what men say your ancestors did?"

"I don't get it clear. It's all wrought into some kind of unity. I don't remember clearly sharp, isolated experiences—except that one time I told you about, and that was clear and sharp repetition. But I remember, all the same. I don't feel any wall between my father and myself, between my mother and myself, my grandparents and myself. You don't know how curiously I seem to share their life! Sometimes, lying still at night, I simply, naturally, am Edward Drew as well as Philip Drew. I lookout of the Edward Drew window—or out of the Andrew or Robert or Margaret or Janet window—and then I turn and look out of the Philip Drew window. I had a great-grandfather who was a sailor. I can't tell you what feel of the deck beneath my feet, what a sense of sea by day and by night, I have at times!... But then, of course, in the far back I must join many sailors.... Iamthose folk. That's my own life they led. I lead their life. Wherever they are, they lead mine!"

He fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the valley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a threadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind which rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain spring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall mountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson tart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they carried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth.

Drew began again. "Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better brain—and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a thousand per cent, ahead of what it is now—I am convinced that I could remember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches right and left. The tree consciousfrom leaf to root, from root to leaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro—and, as somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up and down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high and low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!" He looked as though he rode in that forest. "Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the forests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree! That's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil. You're all things and all people. You share them and they share you. You're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down and lay hold upon you—and still you shall find it home and yourself!'"

On they rode over Bear Mountain, and at last up Rock. Five hundred feet below the top lay a green depression named Hall's Gap. Here a half-dozen cabins made Hall's Town. The people now owned Rock Mountain, its rich forests and rushing waters. A road was in the making and that and other department plans brought to Hall's Gap preliminary groups, the present group being a surveying, engineering, and reporting one, with Malcolm Smith for head. Under him he had Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew, with axmen and spademen hired from the mountain. The cabins in the Gap lodged them all.

Curtin and Drew reached this place before sunset. The men were coming in, dogs barked, the smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. Randall welcomed them, and presently Malcolm Smith appeared and shook hands. They had supper in Hall's big double cabin, with Hall and Mrs. Hall and half a dozen flaxen-haired young Halls, but after supper they went to a neighboring cabin, for the time being their own. Pine knots blazed on the hearth. Malcolm Smith and Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew and Martin Curtin stretched tired limbs and smoked and talked. Morris and Cooper presently played checkers. Malcolm Smith read the newspaper, but after a little put it down and talked. He talked of aviation, and wireless, and of Einstein's notion of space, and of atomic energy. "I've an idea that ideas, ideation generally, imagery, perhaps memory, are simply that energy functioning! We imagine, and that energy has constructed a form in ether. We use it blindly, weakly, unintelligently. But if—"

"I see."

"But if we used it enormously more strongly—and wisely—we'd be creators all night! It's getting very important to know what we do want to create. If we don't look out, presently we may find that our imaginations have life! We've got to choose, I suppose, what kind of life we'll give; silly or monstrous life, or intelligent, kindly, strong, beautiful life!"

Curtin enjoyed the evening on Rock. Flame and odor of burning pine, and the pleasantly grotesque shadows on the cabin walls, made for rich fancies. In one of the easy silences the men grouped in this brown and flame-hued place seemed to him genii, gathered here before they drove their roads over mountains or harnessed their plunging water steeds. He thought: "We are genii! How wonderful it is to be what we are—and shall be!"

Men at Hall's went to bed before ten. Curtin found in a small cabin a hard couch and honest sleep. He slept without turning till five of the morning, when he waked with a great sense of refreshment. "Where I have been I don't know, but it was where vigor flows!" The stars shone in at his window. He lay still for a few minutes, then rose. The air was not too chill. He found when he was dressed that he was warm enough. Opening the cabin door he went out, moving softly so as not to waken Drew and Randall. The morning star hung in the east, and near it the moon in her last quarter. The cold, first hyacinth of dawn streaked the sky. Drew had pointed out the path to the top of the mountain. Curtin, finding it, climbed it alone. Half an hour brought him to the summit. When he reached it the earth was bathed in the cool and violet first light. He found a great projecting rock, shaped like a chair, and took his seat here. The planet, from gold, was becomesilver, and the moon hung like a dream canoe. Here or there mist hid the vast expanse below, but for the most part earth lay clear. The outthrust rock that was his seat gave him two-thirds of the circle.

Stillness with depth and power possessed Curtin. He looked out, and down, and over. Range on range, with narrow vales between, rolled the mountains. In the strengthening light the autumn hue of them gave desert tints; then he picked out clearings, and white points that were hamlets and farmhouses. He turned eyes to where would be Sweet Rocket, though he could not see that valley. It was dawn. Richard Linden would be up. Perhaps, guessing that Curtin might watch dawn brighten from this rock, he might be here in mind and spirit.

Even as he thought this, the presence of Linden not there but here, or both here and there, came to Curtin in a wave. He felt company in solitude, doubled life. And not, as he presently perceived, Linden only. Linden meant thousands of others, as thousands of others meant Linden. Thousands and thousands.... That was himself ... thousands and thousands.

He looked north and east and west; by rising and moving he looked south. The horizon rim lay very far. Using knowledge, he let it farther drop away, drop away. Underneath him was the bulk of the earth. Use power and make it as crystal, penetrable as water or air!Overhead and all around was air, thinning afar into ether. He saw his globe in space and time. A ten-minute road of light ran between it and the sun. He sat very still, but within he moved into the land of contemplation. Here much time came into no-time, so subtle swift was motion. He entered into touch with much for which he had not yet found name or names. He might say, there is deep water and rich land. He might say, the world is other than we thought it. There are Americas ripe for discovery, and there are farther and future Americas forming.

By degrees might lessened. Muscle could not yet hold, nor sense be aware. He came nearer surface. Yet still there was vision. Phosphor was paling, the moon a dim curve of pearl, and all the spread of earth in stronger light. Curtin gazed, and the eyes of the mind outran the eyes of the flesh. Not just Virginia, but all the forty-eight states. Not just the forty-eight, but all America, Canada, and Mexico, and the islands and the republics of the South. He looked to the Atlantic and saw on the farther side Europe and Africa, and on to the east Asia and the Pacific. He saw the continents and the nations. It was not so much that he saw their earth, their body, though he saw that, too. But he saw them, touched them, heard them, as persons. The most of them had lately been at fierce war, fibers of each dissenting, but the bulk warring. Exhausted from war, haggard andtorn, yet still they made gestures with broken weapons. He saw them in the throes of economic and political change, of change from knowledge to knowledge, and of religious change. He saw traits and actions, deep, deep; yesterdays at the point of to-day, and all the morrows being built of yesterdays and to-days. He saw as it were stain and chaff and guilt, and through all these white-running Fire and Life and Upspringing. They were Persons, but a greater Person held them. Light broke. He saw the earth and the world and the heavens as Person. Upon him broke in deluge the vaster Selfhood.

The sun rose over Rock Mountain, the long ranges and the vales. The air had the exquisite fresh energy of Hope. Curtin moved down the path to the cabins. All his being seemed lit and harmonized. "It is what the old saints called conversion. My times fall into the hand of the One that I Am!"

The rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and Alder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and villages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the earth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful voices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness, and with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's consciousness became to a degree one.

The men at work had breakfast at Hall's in great beauty of weather. Afterward Curtin went with them along the proposed line of road. It proved a cheerful group, doing basic work well. The wine of the air and the lift of the earth and the beams of the sun helped amain. Axes rang, pick and shovel sounded. There was a center of work and there were outlying explorations. One hallooed to another. Morris was a master whistler, and you heard him like a redbird. Dave Hall had an interminable mountain ballad which he chanted as he worked. The buzz of the whole might be caught a long way over the mountain slope. Where they worked would be a great driveway for holiday folk. Young and old would pass that way, drinking the great views and the mountain air, pierced by beauty and largeness. Young and old, man and woman, a many and a many, through years heaped like sand!

"I like public work!" said Randall.

Drew answered: "I like it, too! If a scholar wants to help all and a teacher wants to help all, then going to school and teaching are publicworks. But I'm coming back to help hold the forests for themselves and the people."

The morning went by quickly. At noon they had dinner by Indian Creek, that rushed and leaped. Three young Halls brought their food in baskets. It was spread under hemlocks, and they ate as it were in Arden. Dinner over, for half an hour they smoked and rested, stretched out beneath the trees.

"Tell us a story, Cooper!"

"I haven't one. Call Dave Hall over."

Dave came, tall and lank and brown as ale. "Sit under that tree, Dave, and tell us a story."

"I kin sing you about John Horn and Betsy at the dance."

"No. Tell us a story. Tell us about the mountain woman you began about the other day when the storm came up."

"Miss Ellice?"

"Yes, Miss Ellice."

Dave settled himself, with his back to the wine-red trunk of a hemlock. He was lean and tanned, wide-eyed, with a rich, drawling voice. "She was a see-er, that woman! This-a-time that I was telling about the mountain barked like a dawg at her, and showed its teeth and tried to bite—because she said an awful thing! She said that a time would come when every man and woman could do the things that Jesus did. She said Christ was an abstract description of the state of being folks would come to someday, and Jesus was a great laborer who got there earlier than 'most anybody else. Said he was an example, sure enough, and a shower of the way, and who could help loving and wondering? But, 'cording to her, the best way to love Jesus was tolearn. Stop jest do-less wondering, and grow! Said that Bethlehem and Nazareth and Galilee and Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem were where any man or woman was! Brother Carraway preached against her, and the mountain decided she wasn't healthy for it. She was living all alone, but the mountain decided that her cabin had better be emptier yet. She was a tall woman, about the age of my mother, and when you looked at her you'd think at first she wasn't strong....

"Brother Carraway, after he had preached, went on home, but James Curdy always took what he found in the Word and tried to do it. What he found was usually right harsh. James had black eyes pushed 'way in, and long hair that always seemed to me to be blowing in a wind. He was awful fond of the word 'punish.' 'Now you're Punished!' 'God will Punish you!' He used to stride around and do his best to see that God didn't forget it. He was one to see that God did his duty, was James! He couldn't always make the mountain look at things same as he did, but after Brother Carraway's sermon, and the lightning striking Barber's house and killing old Mrs. Barber, he got two-thirds of itworked right up to his feelings! That was Tuesday after Sunday, the lightning having struck on Saturday, and Mrs. Barber buried on Monday. He got about thirty men and boys together at John Williams, and a lot of them had had whisky—I don't know that this air interestin'? I could sing to you about John Horn and Betsy."

"No, go on! They were going to drive Miss Ellice off the mountain?"

"That was the intention. But this very Indian Creek about a mile from here makes a pool that's called Dumb Child Pool, because little Johnny Nelson that was dumb was drowned there. He fell in while the children were gathering nuts and he couldn't make them hear. Well, those that had had something stronger than water, they were all for seeing if Miss Ellice wasn't a witch! You know how folk used to prove a witch? That was about twenty of the eager ones, mostly young men. This wasn't very recent. I wasn't living on this mountain, but on Stormy Mountain over thar. I came here when Lucinda Nelson and me married. But I've heard all about it."

He spat vigorously. "Now, this is where her seeing with other eyes than like yourn and mine comes in! And how I come to know about some things that others don't was that that very Lucinda Nelson that I married happened to be at Miss Ellice's that day. Nelsons ain't afraidof anything, and Miss Ellice had done them neighborly turns, sitting up with the sick and sharing coffee, and such as that. Anyhow, Lucinda was there, and Miss Ellice was braiding a rug and seemed extraordinarily cheerful and sunny. 'Long about two of the clock, as it were, she broke off her talk and finished her row, as it might be, without looking at it. Then she says to Lucinda—and Lucinda says she was that still and sunny, like a day that comes sometimes, that she was 'most afraid of her, just as you're 'most afraid sometimes of that kind of day, and yet you want to stay by it and it to stay by you—she says, says she, 'I'd like you to stay longer, Lucinda, but I find that I've got something to do! You go along, honey, and if I don't see you again I want you to remember that I like you and think you're on the right road!' And with that she got up and kissed Lucinda and stood in the door to watch her down the path. Lucinda went along home. Well, in about two hours, here they come, James Curdy and Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan, and the others, drunk with whisky and with what they thought was the Word of God. They had a rope, and they meant the Dumb Child Pool."

He spat again. "'Twas Jonathan Morgan that told me, and Lucinda the rest of it. He was young and wild in those days. Jonathan says he hadn't been drinking, and for all that now and then he shouted with the rest he hadnever seen a day so sunny and still, and just the minute after he'd shouted he'd see the whole as in a picture—his crowd and the Dumb Child's Pool, and Miss Ellice's cabin. Kind of saw it out of himself as it were, as though he was sitting on the bough of a tree looking, seeing thar as well as here. But the rest of them, I reckon, didn't see nothing but a witch and something exciting to do—unless it was James Curdy—and what he saw and felt Lord knows! Something like a nightmare, I reckon!

"Miss Ellice's cabin was high on the mountain. They stopped shouting when they got nearly up thar. They thought that if before that Miss Ellice heard them she'd just think it was some jamboree going on alongside of mountain. James Curdy had such a rule that he could bring even the drunken ones quiet for a bit. So they stole up the path, and Jonathan said that the cabin above them looked like a goldy leaf hanging still, or like an empty nest. So they went up in a string till they got to where the trees stopped and there was just some bushes and grass. And then they spread out, and went on in a bunch, and James Curdy cried in a loud voice, 'Woman, come forth!' But the shut door didn't open. Then he cried it again, and then he opened that tight mouth of his the third time. He had more learning than most of the mountain and he used big words. 'Blaspheming atheist, come forth!' But the others wouldn'tstay quiet any longer, and they shouted, 'Witch! Witch!'

"The door stayed shut, and Jonathan said that the cabin hung like a goldy leaf or a nest high up on a bright, still winter day. Jonathan says there was something so still and sunny there that it stilled the shouting. Then they opened the door, for it wasn't bolted, and those that could get in went in—James Curdy at the head. Those outside spread around so's they could catch her if she run out. But Miss Ellice wasn't at home. She was gone.

"Thar was her half-braided rug and her chair and a little fire on the hearth. But she wasn't there. It turned out that she had taken a bag and a basket with her clothes, and a little money she had. And then Mat Waters found the letter on the table, and Jonathan Morgan read it, because James Curdy had left his spectacles at home. And if you'll believe me it was directed to 'James Curdy and Matthew Waters and Jonathan Morgan and their Company.' Inside it said just this: 'I've loved this cabin and this mountain. But now I remove myself from among you. Yet I love this place where I have been, and am, and shall be. Now abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.' And then there was the name, Ann Ellice.

"Jonathan said half of them were still drunk and outrageous because they couldn't have theirfun at Dumb Child's Pool. A lot didn't even listen to the letter, seeing with their own eyes that Miss Ellice was gone. James Curdy listened, and his face got white and his eyes red coals. 'She's brazen!' says he. 'The devil talks Scripture to his own damnation!' He went out of door and looked about him. But most of the rest didn't see anything but that they'd lost something exciting to do. They began to break up the furniture. Then some one raked the coals and brands out over the floor and they set the straw bed on fire. But Jonathan took the letter and a book or two she had—Lucinda's got the books now. But James Curdy stood outside and looked down mountain. 'That's Harris's cabin a mile over thar. It's likely she's thar.' And he began to go down over mountain side. Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan followed him, and so did about half of the others. The rest stayed to burn the cabin. The witch had gone off on a broomstick for them!

"The Harrises were a kind of lonely folk that didn't go much to church or nowhar. They mightn't even have heard of Brother Carraway's sermon. She might be thar, as James Curdy thought. But she wasn't. She had been thar, they said, jest a minute. She'd looked in on old Aunt Viny Harris and said she was going away. Said she was going to foot of mountain to Norwood, whar you get the train. Aunt Viny asked when she was coming back, and Miss Ellicesmiled and said she didn't think she was coming back. 'Whar was she going to live?' She said she didn't exactly know, but she had kinsmen who would take care of her. 'Aye,' said Aunt Viny, 'you're a master weaver and worker, and any folk ought to be glad to have such a handy woman around!' Which shows that the Harrises hadn't heard anything. And so Aunt Viny said Miss Ellice said good-by very friendly, and went on down mountain. James Curdy wanted to set a hound of Harris's on her track, and the drunk ones shouted at that, and one staggered out to get the dawg. But Jonathan, he represented that Miss Ellice would be 'most down mountain now and out on big road where the tracks would be all mixed up and covered, and anyhow the folk down there wouldn't understand and let it be done. By that time the cabin was burning up on mountain above them. They could see the smoke and light. James Curdy had to let it be, though doubtless he had some hard thoughts of the Almighty. Well, that is the end of it! She didn't ever come back. It ain't much of a story. I don't know why I told it to you."

"You don't know where she went?"

"No. Mountain folk ain't curious in them ways. You'd better have let me sing to you about John Horn. Lucinda says she took her body away, but not her spirit. Says she can feel her any still and sunny day. I reckon Jonathan Morgan feels the same way. I don't know.It's been a long time ago! Brother Carraway's dead and Jonathan Morgan is Brother Morgan now and preaches in the old church. Things air sure changing in this world! Last summer I heard him say myself that Christ was inside us and not outside—might never have been outside us, so much in the world being parable! James Curdy's so old now he couldn't do anything but look mad as an old beast in winter and get right up and go out of church, looking like a snow cloud and talking to himself.... Lucinda says people keep on acting and persuading if we see them or if we don't see them!"

He lifted himself, long, lank, and brown, and moved from the hemlock. "You air welcome—Mr. Smith, you'd better speak to Jim Harris about them logs."

Malcolm Smith, talking with Curtin in the cool twilight, before Hall's, had no word against Drew's departure for Sweet Rocket. "He's a valuable, likable fellow! There's a curious sense when you are with him of depth or background that he doesn't understand himself. Violin wood! He says that this friend of yours has something to teach that he wants to learn. That's all right! I can generally tell when a man's real destiny is ruling him. I've got that feeling now about Drew. He needs to buy in a certain city and he's going there. If we're here next year—and there's a lot to do on Rock Mountain—I'll be glad to take him on again."

Bedtime came. Again Curtin slept profoundly, restfully, waked early, and climbed again to crest of mountain to see again the sun rise over so great expanse. He sat in the stone chair and before him hung the morning star and the senescent moon. Below them was spread violet and jonquil and one strange sea of blue.

Again he felt the Spiritual Sun. He thought: "This is what they have perceived at SweetRocket. They have not waited for death. They live now, and forever, and know it. This body will go from them, but they are building or remembering—I do not know which, and perhaps it is both—a life that will not go from them. And I also, also, though I am a babe yet—"

Sitting in the hollow of stone at the top of the upraised wave of earth he watched the sunrise from Rock Mountain.... He conceived that what was true of him was true of others, had been true age after age, was true now over this round earth of others. He thought: "There has always been a fellowship. The eidelweiss does not guess the roses and the heliotrope, nor the violet and the meadow rue. But at last the garden of the earth guesses! It becomes the living garden. The living garden becomes the living man. Naught is right, naught is reasonable, until you get it from the whole."

The sun rose, the earth turned ruddy. Curtin went down the path to Hall's, breakfasting there with the men who worked with head and hands. This morning he and Drew would start for Sweet Rocket. Drew's slender luggage was going down mountain to Norwood, whence the train would take it to Alder. Every one liked Drew, even Cooper who laughed at him. "Good luck, old farmer! Ride over and see us sometime!"

The two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon, and went up BearMountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and down Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into the Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented companionship. Once Drew spoke. "He said, 'A good present is one in which the past betters its condition.'" When he said "he" there was meant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having struck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads of the world.

They approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone the river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its pillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of the day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking before the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed, castles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts, giants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for one instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong and fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or roughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and light. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing itself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens. Drew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, "There is splendor!"

They felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth screened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is, they thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become endowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their horses. Curtin said, "So it was always in poetry!"

The younger man had a curious gesture. "We gather all the household gear into the long ship, and put forth!"

But Curtin thought, "In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the Ark and rides the waters into a new world."

They crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by the cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk and the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two.

Linden said, "These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come for a little while each year to Sweet Rocket."

They were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the city upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces, eyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to compression. They seemed tired—about them breathed something of soldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was bivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almostresentment. "O God,howcan you be still and ageless?" This changed, little by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They were left taut, collected, wary—workers worthy of praise in a dangerous world.

At the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their life. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna Darcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals certainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than one, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them speaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the throng to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of Guild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that did never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic, for which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage Amendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They belonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was Associate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism of the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable violinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that little away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room and three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well ata school they liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they worked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them and kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness.

Though in talking Linden and Marget used in a much less marked degree the terminology used by the newcomers, it seemed to present no difficulties to them. They seemed to understand these guests, as they understood those others who had come to Sweet Rocket this October, to understand and to travel with them. Curtin thought: "They sympathize. It does not occur to them to say, 'Do something else, take another road!'" He thought: "That is their strength. They utterly share."

Frances Dane had brought her violin to Sweet Rocket. Yesterday it had been laid in the parlor. Now, after supper, sitting by the fire in the old room, the violin spoke. It told of the player's passion for the world, of the man who wrote that music's passion for the world, of the passion for the world of all makers of violins, and of the trees whose wood was used, of the passion for the world that is progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is the slower rate that is called withstanding progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is music, of the passion for the world yesterday, to-day, and forever, of the passion for the world that every heart of us knows!

"It is something like this," said Linden. "We are One Being with its mighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth goes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to better liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that flow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that is cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours. We go as we have gone through time, from and toward—the from that is also toward, the toward that is also from. But something beyond Time as we have known it, beyond Space and Causation as we have known them, increases upon us. Consciousness in some sort of the whole orb, awareness through and through, is momentously upon us to-day. In the end all desire is desire for that."

"We shall move then in four-space?"

"If you choose to put it so. It is an allowable figure. All that present language can devise is but a word, a figure, a symbol. What we mean is the next advance in consciousness. When you have it you know it."

They were treading a slender path through October fields. Now they were in a great, climbing cornfield, all stacked corn like brown wigwams, and here and there upon the brown and stubbly earth the orange of pumpkins. The air folded them in violet and gold dust and faint frankincense. The hills had changed in color, so many leaves being shaken down. On days like this the mountains were evidently entranced. It was Indian summer before the Indian summer time. "A new consciousness?" said Frances Dane, walking with Curtin. "A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air to-day!"

"Yes."

"Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east—' Oh, that's a figure!"

"There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as we are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation devoutly to be desired!"

The heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on the earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket and the little sliding river. All was reflected, all was veiled, but now and again eyes looked through the veil. Reaching the top of the hill they found there a tall, solitary tree—a black gum—and built around it a bench. It linked in Curtin's mind with the sycamore before the overseer's house.

They sat upon the bench and upon the ringof brown grass that ran around the tree. The view was fair and they rested in silence. It was Anna Darcy who noticed how much silence there was at Sweet Rocket—silence that sang, that caressed. Moments went by, silence held them, fair solitude, sense of one person here alone. Tam moved, coming nearer to Linden. The latter's hand dropped to Tam's head. Anna Darcy heard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from Frances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come from more than Frances, from all.

Stillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert, an ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast wave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they had it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and of them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision of this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. Color and sound lived, every movement was of joy. That broke away, vanished like the image of a rose into the image of a garden of ten thousand. Then that was gone into an image of all the earth, and then that into intense, sheer, mighty Living, with small regard to old space and time, abounding, keen, a Reality leaving old reality behind.

"When it is all done, when it is all known, all felt, when we are fully, completely ourself, whenwe remember our Godhood and live it, when we do not look through storm for the lighthouse ray because we are Light, when we do not cry Father and Son because we are both and know it, when there is glory of home, glory of health, glory of love—"

Who had spoken they did not know; it seemed their common voice. Perhaps it was Linden, but if so he spoke as their common voice. Into it came not only the voice of the seven there, but the voice of old Mr. Morrowcombe and the Carters, and of Mrs. Cliff and Mimy and Zinia and Mancy and the others; not just the voice of Sweet Rocket, but the voice of Alder, and of many an Alder, big and little, the voice of the city and the country, the land and the sea. "To be well! Oh, rise within me, truest Self, with healing in thy wings!"

The great, golden feeling passed, leaving echoes, leaving memory. These folk were separate again where they had been one, but not so separate. In and out hovered that breath of transfiguration, a day of spring in late winter, dying, but with a tongue to tell of a time when it would not die. Where all had been vivid, singing, laughing, now was the wonted gentleness of this valley, a dreaminess shot with gold, taking and giving, but doing it subtly, silently, only now and then bestowing evidence of a vast interpenetrative life, showing like the eyes through the veil of this Indian summer day.

They went down through the corn and out by a gate, set in the gray and lichened rail fence, where grew sumac and farewell-summer and the feathery traveler's-joy. They walked in meadows by the river, and at last through the orchard, and so to the house. Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing:

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