This hurts--beliefs of earlier years.

FELIX: The things it hurts will have to go.

FEJEVARY: I don't know about that, Felix. Perhaps in time we'll find
truth in them.

FELIX: Oh, if you feel that way, father.

FEJEVARY: Don't be kind to me, my boy, I'm not that old.

SILAS: But think what it is you've said! If it's true that we made
ourselves--made ourselves out of the wanting to be more--created
ourselves you might say, by our own courage--our--what is
it?--aspiration. Why, I can't take it in. I haven't got the mind to take
it in. And what mind I have got says no. It's too--

FEJEVARY: It fights with what's there.

SILAS: (_nodding_) But it's like I got this (_very slowly_) other way
around. From underneath. As if I'd known it all along--but have just
found out I know it! Yes. The earth told me. The beasts told me.

GRANDMOTHER: Fine place to learn things from.

SILAS: Anyhow, haven't I seen it? (_to_ FEJEVARY) In your face haven't I
seen thinking make a finer face? How long has this taken, Felix,
to--well, you might say, bring us where we are now?

FELIX: Oh, we don't know how many millions of years since earth first
stirred.

SILAS: Then we are what we are because through all that time there've
been them that wanted to be more than life had been.

FELIX: That's it, Uncle Silas.

SILAS: But--why, then we aren't _finished_ yet!

FEJEVARY: No. We take it on from here.

SILAS: (_slowly_) Then if we don't be--the most we can be, if we don't
be more than life has been, we go back on all that life behind us; go
back on--the--

(_Unable to formulate it, he looks to_ FEJEVARY.)

FEJEVARY: Go back on the dreaming and the daring of a million years.

(_After a moment's pause_ SILAS _gets up, opens the closet door_.)

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, what you doing?

SILAS: (_who has taken out a box_) I'm lookin' for the deed to the hill.

GRANDMOTHER: What you going to do with it?

SILAS: I'm going to get it out of my hands.

GRANDMOTHER: Get it out of your hands? (_he has it now_) Deed your
father got from the government the very year the government got it from
the Indians?

(_rising_) Give me that! (_she turns to_ FEJEVARY) Tell him he's crazy.
We got the best land 'cause we was first here. We got a right to keep
it.

FEJEVARY: (_going soothingly to her_) It's true, Silas, it is a serious
thing to give away one's land.

SILAS: You ought to know. You did it. Are you sorry you did it?

FEJEVARY: No. But w