e
earth caught up again with their level, already it was dim and purple and
tall trees were no more than a roughened hedge. But what lay beyond that
range of hills--what towns and cities--what oceans and forests--how beset
with adventure--how fearful after dark--these things you could not see,
even if you climbed to some high place and strained yourself on tiptoe. And
if you walked from breakfast to lunch--until you gnawed within and were but
a hollow drum--there would still be a higher range against the sky. There
are misty kingdoms on this whirling earth, but the ways are long and steep.

The lake lay to the north with no land beyond, the city to the east. But to
the west--

Several miles outside the city as it then was, and still beyond its
clutches, the country was cut by a winding river bottom with sharp edges of
shale. Down this valley Rocky River came brawling in the spring, over-fed
and quarrelsome. Later in the year--its youthful appetite having caught an
indigestion--it shrunk and wasted to a shadow. By August you could cross it
on the stones. The uproar of its former flood was marked upon the shale and
trunks of trees here and there were wedged, but now the river plays drowsy
tunes upon the stones. There is scarcely enough movement of water to flick
the sunlight. A leaf on its idle current is a lazy craft whose skipper
nods. There were hickory trees on the point above. May-apples grew in the
deep woods, and blackberries along the fences. And in the season sober
horses plowed up and down the fields with nodding heads, affirming their
belief in the goodness of the soil and their willingness to help in its
fruition.

Yet the very core of this valley in days past was a certain depth of water
at a turn of the stream. There was a clay bank above it and on it small
naked boys stood and daubed themselves. One of them put a band of clay
about himself by way of decoration. Another, by a more general smudge, made
himself a Hottentot and thereby gave his manners a wider scope and license.
But by daubing yourself entire you became an Indian and might vent yourself
in hideous yells, for it was amazing how the lungs grew stouter when the
clay was laid on thick. Then you tapped your flattened palm rapidly against
your mouth and released an intermittent uproar in order that the valley
might he warned of the deviltry to come. You circled round and round and
beat upon the ground in the likeness of a war dance. But at last, sat