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, the earlier 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 I have been—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 of parents 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. I remember."

"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 look out 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.... I am those 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 conscious from 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 become silver, 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 and torn, 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.

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