he years.
For there had been so many rings....

CHAPTER XXXVIII

It was a clear beautiful afternoon toward the end of May. And as the train
puffing up the grade wound along the Connecticut River, Roger sat looking
out of the window. The orchards were pink and white on the hills. Slowly
the day wore away. The river narrowed, the hills reared high, and in the
sloping meadows gray ribs and shoulders of granite appeared. The air had a
tang of the mountains. Everywhere were signs of spring, of new vigor and
fresh life. But the voices at each station sounded drowsier than at the
last, the eyes appeared more stolid, and to Roger it felt like a journey
far back into old ways of living, old beliefs and old ideals. He had always
had this feeling, and always he had relished it, this dive into his
boyhood. But it was different to-day, for this was more than a journey, it
was a migration, too. Close about him in the car were Edith and her
children, bound for a new home up there in the very heart and stronghold of
all old things in America.

Old things dear to Edith's heart. As she sat by the window staring out, he
watched her shapely little head; he noted the hardening lines on her
forehead and the gray which had come in her hair. It had been no easy move
for her, this, she'd shown pluck to take it so quietly. He saw her smile a
little, then frown and go on with her thinking. What was she thinking
about, he wondered--all she had left behind in New York, or the rest of her
life which lay ahead? She had always longed for things simple and old.
Well, she would have them now with a vengeance, summer and winter, the year
'round, in the battered frame house on the mountain side, the birthplace of
her family. A recollection came to him of a summer's dusk two years ago
and a woman with a lawn mower cutting the grass on the family graves. Would
Edith ever be like that, a mere custodian of the past? If she did, he
thought, she would be false to the very traditions she tried to preserve.
For her forefathers had never been mere guardians of things gone by. Always
they had been pioneers. That house had not been old to them, but a
thrilling new adventure. Their old homes they had left behind, far down in
the valleys to the east. And even those valley homes had been new to the
rugged men come over the sea. Would Edith ever understand? Would she see
that for herself the new must emerge from her children, from the ideas,
desires and plans