Beyond was the rough descent to wood and stream.
Jamie spoke: "He's a queer body! He says he thinks that he lived a
long time ago, and then a shorter time ago, and then now. He says that
some days he sees it all come up in a kind of dark desert."
Alice put in her word, "Mother says he's many in one, and that the
many and one don't yet recognize each other."
"Your mother is a wise woman," said the tutor. "Let me see how the
work goes."
The pine-tree, outside the wall, overhung a rude natural stairway of
stony ledge and outcropping root with patches of moss and heath. Down
this went Alexander into a cool dimness of fir and oak and birch,
watered by a little stream. He kneeled by this, he cooled face and
hands in the water, then flung himself beneath a tree and, burying his
head in his arms, lay still. The waves within subsided, sank to a
long, deep swell, then from that to quiet. The door that wind and tide
had beaten open shut again. Alexander lay without thinking, without
overmuch feeling. At last, turning, he opened his eyes upon the
tree-tops and the August sky. The door was shut upon tales of injury
and revenge. Between boy and man, he lay in a yearning stillness,
colors and sounds and dim poetic strains his ministers of grace. This
lasted for a time, then he rose, first to a sitting posture, then to
his feet.
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