ifference--even to them that never go.

GRANDMOTHER: Now, Silas--don't be hasty.

SILAS: Hasty? It's been company to me for years. Came to me one
night--must 'a' been ten years ago--middle of a starry night as I was
comin' home from your place (_to_ FEJEVARY) I'd gone over to lend a hand
with a sick horse an'--

FEJEVARY: (_with a grateful smile_) That was nothing new.

SILAS: Well, say, I'd sit up with a sick horse that belonged to the
meanest man unhung. But--there were stars that night had never been
there before. Leastways I'd not seen 'em. And the hill--Felix, in all
your travels east, did you ever see anything more beautiful than that
hill?

FELIX: It's like sculpture.

SILAS: Hm. (_the wistfulness with which he speaks of that outside his
knowledge_) I s'pose 'tis. It's the way it rises--somehow--as if it knew
it rose from wide and fertile lands. I climbed the hill that night,
(_to_ FEJEVARY) You'd been talkin'. As we waited between medicines you
told me about your life as a young man. All you'd lived through seemed
to--open up to you that night--way things do at times. Guess it was
'cause you thought you was goin' to lose your horse. See, that was
Colonel, the sorrel, wasn't it?

FEJEVARY: Yes. Good old Colonel.

SILAS: You'd had a long run o' off luck. Hadn't got things back in shape
since the war. But say, you didn't lose him, did you?

FEJEVARY: Thanks to you.

SILAS: Thanks to the medicine I keep in the back kitchen.

FEJEVARY: You encouraged him.

GRANDMOTHER: Silas has a way with all the beasts.

SILAS: We've got the same kind of minds--the beasts and me.

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, I wish you wouldn't talk like that--and with Felix
just home from Harvard College.

SILAS: Same kind of minds--except that mine goes on a little farther.

GRANDMOTHER: Well I'm glad to hear you say that.

SILAS: Well, there we sat--you an' me--middle of a starry night, out
beside your barn. And I guess it came over you kind of funny you should
be there with me--way off the Mississippi, tryin' to save a sick horse.
Seemed to--bring your life to life again. You told me what you studied
in that fine old university you loved--the Vienna,--and why you became a
revolutionist. The old dreams took hold o' you and you talked--way you
used to, I suppose. The years, o' course, had rubbed some of it off.
Your face as you went on about the vision--you called it, vision of what
life could be. I knew that night there was things I