Allan came with Deborah who had a baby in her arms, and Laura stood beside
them. Here were his three daughters, grown, but still in some uncanny way
they looked to him like children still; and behind them he detected figures
long forgotten, of boys and girls whom he had known far back in his own
childhood. John, too, had come into the house. Strangely now the walls were
gone, had lifted, and a clamorous throng, laughing, shouting, pummeling,
hedged him in on every hand--Deborah's big family!

Soon the uproar wearied him, and Roger tried to shut them out, to bring
back again the walls to his house. And sometimes he succeeded, and he was
left for a while in peace with Judith and his three small girls. But
despite his efforts to keep them there, new faces kept intruding. Swiftly
his small family grew, split into other families, and these were merged
with other figures pressing in from every side. Again he felt the presence
of countless families all around, dividing, reuniting, with ceaseless
changes and fresh life--a never ending multitude. Here they were singing
and dancing, and Laura gaily waved to him. At another place were only men,
and they were struggling savagely to clutch things from each other's
hands. A sea of scowling visages, angry shouts, fists clinched in air. And
he thought he saw Bruce for an instant. Behind them lay wide valleys
obscured by heavy clouds of smoke, and he could hear the roar of guns. But
they vanished suddenly, and he saw women mourning now, and Edith with her
children turned to him her anxious eyes. He tried to reach and help her,
but already she had gone. And behind her came huge bending forms, men
heaving at great burdens, jaws set in scowls of fierce revolt. And John was
there on his crutches, and near him was a figure bound into a chair of
steel, with terror in the straining limbs, while in desperation Deborah
tried to wrench him free. Abruptly Roger turned away.

And in a twinkling all was gone, the tumult and the clamor, and he was in a
silent place high up on a mountain side. It was dusk. A herd of cattle
passed, and George came close behind them. And around him Roger saw,
emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of
the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see
no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of
a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was
gone. Darkness, onl