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Roger stayed on for another two weeks, on into the best time of the year.  For now came the nights of the first snapping frosts when the dome of the heavens was steely blue, and clear sparkling mornings, the woods aflame with scarlet and gold.  And across the small field below the house, at sunset Roger would go down to the copse of birches there and find it filled with glints of light that took his glance far in among the slender, creamy stems of the trees, all slowly swaying to and fro, the leafage rich with autumn hues, warm orange, yellow and pale green.  Lovely and silent and serene.  So it had been when he was a boy and so it would be when he was dead.  Countless trees had been cut down but others had risen in their stead.  Now and then he could hear a bird warbling.

Long ago this spot had been his mother’s favorite refuge from her busy day in the house.  She had almost always come alone, but sometimes Roger stealing down would watch her sitting motionless and staring in among the trees.  Years later in his reading he had come upon the phrase, “sacred grove,” and at once he had thought of the birches.  And sitting here where she had been, he felt again that boundless faith in life resplendent, conquering death, and serenely sweeping him on—­into what he did not fear.  For this had been his mother’s faith.  Sometimes in the deepening dusk he could almost see her sitting here.

“This faith in you has come from me.  This is my memory living on in you, my son, though you do not know.  How many times have I held you back, how many times have I urged you on, roused you up or soothed you, made you hope or fear or dream, through memories of long ago.  For you were once a part of me.  I moulded you, my little son.  And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children.  In their lives, too, we shall be there—­silent and invisible, the dim strong figures of the past.  For this is the power of families, this is the mystery of birth.”

Suddenly he started.  What was it that had thrilled him so?  Only a tall dark fir in the birches.  But looming in there like a shadowy phantom it had recalled a memory of a dusk far back in his boyhood, when seeing a shadow just like this he had thought it a ghost in very truth and had run for the house like a rabbit!  How terribly real that fright had been!  The recollection suddenly became so vivid in his mind, that as though a veil had been lifted he felt the living presence here, close by his side, of a small barefoot mountain lad, clothed in sober homespun gray, but filled with warm desires, dreams and curiosities, exploring upon every hand, now marching boldly forward, now stealing up so cautiously, now galloping away like mad!  “I was once a child.”  To most of us these are mere words.  To few is it ever given to attain so much as even a glimpse into the warm and quivering soul of that little stranger of long ago.  We do not know how we were made.