At dusk he heard the voices of animals, birds and insects, murmuring up from all the broad valley, then gradually sinking to deep repose, many never to wake again.  And the span of his life, from the boyhood which he could recall so vividly here among these children, seemed brief to him as a summer’s day, only a part of a mighty whole made up of the innumerable lives, the many generations, of his family, his own flesh and blood, come out of a past he could never know, and going on without him now, branching, dividing, widening out to what his eyes would never see.

Vaguely he pictured them groping their way, just as he himself had done.  It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all.  And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others—­always groping, blundering, starting—­children, only children all.  And yet what lives they were to lead, what joys and revelations and disasters would be theirs, in the strange remote world they would live in—­“my flesh and blood that I never shall know.”

But the stars were quiet and serene.  The meadows and the forests on the broad sweep of the mountain side took on still brighter, warmer hues.  And there was no gloom in these long good-byes.

* * * * *

On a frosty night in September, he left the farm to go to the city.  From his seat in the small automobile Roger looked back at the pleasant old house with its brightly lighted windows, and then he turned to George by his side: 

“We’re in good shape for the winter, son.”

But George did not get his full meaning.

At the little station, there were no other passengers.  They walked the platform for some time.  Then the train with a scream came around the curve.  A quick grip on George’s hand, and Roger climbed into the car.  Inside, a moment later, he looked out through the window.  By a trainman with a lantern, George stood watching, smiling up, and he waved his hand as the train pulled out.

CHAPTER XXXIX

The next morning on his arrival in town, Roger went to his office.  He had little cause for uneasiness there, for twice in the summer he had come down to keep an eye on the business, while John had taken brief vacations at a seaside place nearby.  The boy had no color now in his cheeks; as always, they were a sallow gray with the skin drawn tight over high cheek bones; his vigor was all in his eyes.  But here was a new John, nevertheless, a successful man of affairs.  He had on a spruce new suit of brown, no cheap ready-made affair but one carefully fitted to conceal and soften his deformity.  He was wearing a bright blue tie and a cornflower in his buttonhole, and his sandy hair was sleekly brushed.  He showed Roger into his private room, a small place he had partitioned off, where over his desk was a motto in gold:  “This is no place for your troubles or mine.”