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 Sweet Rocket. 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 Bear Mountain, 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 almost resentment. "O God, how can 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 at a 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!