ur kneeling into a sitting posture--this also we remark: of that
same exact shape and outline is our thorn-tree seen against the sky in
mid-winter: of that shape also is delicate metallic tracery between our
rocks; in that exact path does our water flow when without a furrow we
lead it from the dam; so shaped are the antlers of the horned beetle.
How are these things related that such deep union should exist between
them all? Is it chance? Or, are they not all the fine branches of one
trunk, whose sap flows through us all? That would explain it. We nod
over the gander's inside.

This thing we call existence; is it not a something which has its roots
far down below in the dark, and its branches stretching out into the
immensity above, which we among the branches cannot see? Not a
chance jungle; a living thing, a One. The thought gives us intense
satisfaction, we cannot tell why.

We nod over the gander; then start up suddenly, look into the blue sky,
throw the dead gander and the refuse into the dam, and go to work again.

And so, it comes to pass in time, that the earth ceases for us to be a
weltering chaos. We walk in the great hall of life, looking up and round
reverentially. Nothing is despicable--all is meaning-full; nothing is
small--all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The
life that throbs in us is a beginning and end we know not. The life that
throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too mighty for our comprehension,
not too small.

And so, it comes to pass at last, that whereas the sky was at first a
small blue rag stretched out over us, and so low that our hands might
touch it, pressing down on us, it raises itself into an immeasurable
blue arch over our heads, and we begin to live again.

Chapter 2.II. Waldo's Stranger.

Waldo lay on his stomach on the red sand. The small ostriches he herded
wandered about him, pecking at the food he had cut, or at pebbles and
dry sticks. On his right lay the graves; to his left the dam; in his
hand was a large wooden post covered with carvings, at which he worked.
Doss lay before him basking in the winter sunshine, and now and again
casting an expectant glance at the corner of the nearest ostrich camp.
The scrubby thorn-trees under which they lay yielded no shade, but none
was needed in that glorious June weather, when in the hottest part of
the afternoon the sun was but pleasantly warm; and the boy carved on,
not looking up, yet conscious of the