"It is the flowering land, it is the music land. You go to it through every moment and incident and encounter of the day. You read, and it is behind the words. You think, and it smiles through. It is the Higher Us that resolves the discords and reaps the fields. Experience it once, and it is miracle and wonder; experience it twice, and you say, 'Columbus was not the only discoverer!' Experience it thrice, and you work for it day and night! You yourself, drawing yourself out of the old man and the old house. Read 'The Chambered Nautilus.'"

"It is religion—"

"It always has been Religion."

"And the gloom and storm of our day?"

"It is not gloom, it is not storm. It is the pains of growth. Feel the epic and voyage that it is!... Every proper and general noun in all dictionaries now and to come is my name, as it is yours. Every verb is my doing, as it is yours. The use of language, use and dis-use, is mine as it is yours—"

They were walking in the orchard beneath the apple trees, whose leaves were slow to fall. There had been, this morning, a heavy frost. The garden flowers were going, the creeper over Mimy's house had shed its scarlet leaves, but held its dark-blue berries. The heavens hung a blue crystal. The air had the cool of mountain water.

It was the day when Anna Darcy must leave Sweet Rocket. After dinner Daniel and the phaeton and Marget would take her to Alder to the north-going train. Now, with Marget, she went the round of the place, saying good-by. They had been to Mimy's, and had talked to Mancy at the barn. "Come again!" said Mancy. "But you ain't really going, you know! Sweet Rocket will hold you, and you'll hold Sweet Rocket."

They came by the kitchen. Mimy was singing:

"You gwine back inter the troubled world?" said Mimy. "They say hit's awful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot."

They walked up the river to the overseer's house, where they were made welcome by Mary Carter and small Roger, and by old Mr. Morrowcombe, who was staying over from Sunday, which was yesterday. He said, much as Mancy had said: "I'm sorry you are going! But thar! You ain't going in the old, harsh ways."

Marget, sitting beside him on the step of the porch, rested her arm upon his knee. Her brown, slender hand touched his great horny one. "Grandfather Morrowcombe!" she said. He answered her: "I see you as a nine-year-old, Marget, and I see you as a woman in Sweet Rocket Valley, and I see you as something that stands above child and woman. It isn't any more big than it is subtle-fine. It's puzzling to find words. But when I look at you and think of you I seem to hear the air stirring over the whole world. All kinds of things that I had forgotten, and all kinds of things that I have read...."

She and Anna sat for five minutes under the sycamore by the water. Returning then to Sweet Rocket, they walked in the garden that was making ready for winter. As it happened, Mrs. Cliff came this day down mountain to borrow some sugar. She sat on the steps of the back porch, in the violet light of November. "Howdy!" she said to Miss Darcy. "I'm glad you stayed on. When I come here I want to stay on, too. But thar! I take the memory of it up to my home. You wouldn't think how often thar I'm here, too!"

To-day she had a braided rug to sell, and Marget bought it. Mrs. Cliff's long, wrinkled hand put the money in her pocket. "Times isn't betterin' any, Miss Marget."

Marget laughed. "Oh, the poor old times!"

It startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was the voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not what one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in a network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible moment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally youthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun came out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. "I reckon you're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so much that we can afford to take it tranquil—which ain't to say that we're either do-less or keerless!"

She spoke to Anna. "You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I had? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe in the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it comes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to feeling it again."

But Marget had taken it joyously.

When Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing the pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room, Anna's consciousness gathering each. "Any time you may feel me here!"

"We shall feel you here all the time."

They stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. "At first, when I thought of this room, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is of and for and to both of you."

"Ah yes! To both."

She seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, "Is it only the sun shining on her?"

Later, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna went and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet Rocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though it was dreaming now of spring. "I have been here only a month, but in it I have had years and years."

The quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance. Again, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of the sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here.

The boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget came for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to find there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia and Mimy, and Mancy and Tam.

Across the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that Anna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees and the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. "But you are to come again," said Marget. "Never part, and come again!"

"Yes, oh yes!"

The wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the forest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and again and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves, sloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded higher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the subjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal, the spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the wheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little, having now no great need of words. The light came down between bare branches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework. Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south—the birds go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company. There is a bluebird on yonder bough!"

Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was maya, illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna Darcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze itself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash went as it came, ere one could say, It lightens! Maya again, Marget Land and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket and Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and there was left stronger light.

The train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at Marget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains. The train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was changed. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and mountains. "And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor aching gulf. There are the finest gradations—"

Marget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road.

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