SILAS: Hm. (_the wistfulness with which he speaks of that outside his knowledge_) I s'pose 'tis. It's the way it rises--somehow--as if it knew it rose from wide and fertile lands. I climbed the hill that night, (_to_ FEJEVARY) You'd been talkin'. As we waited between medicines you told me about your life as a young man. All you'd lived through seemed to--open up to you that night--way things do at times. Guess it was 'cause you thought you was goin' to lose your horse. See, that was Colonel, the sorrel, wasn't it? FEJEVARY: Yes. Good old Colonel. SILAS: You'd had a long run o' off luck. Hadn't got things back in shape since the war. But say, you didn't lose him, did you? FEJEVARY: Thanks to you. SILAS: Thanks to the medicine I keep in the back kitchen. FEJEVARY: You encouraged him. GRANDMOTHER: Silas has a way with all the beasts. SILAS: We've got the same kind of minds--the beasts and me. GRANDMOTHER: Silas, I wish you wouldn't talk like that--and with Felix just home from Harvard College. SILAS: Same kind of minds--except that mine goes on a little farther. GRANDMOTHER: Well I'm glad to hear you say that. SILAS: Well, there we sat--you an' me--middle of a starry night, out beside your barn. And I guess it came over you kind of funny you should be there with me--way off the Mississippi, tryin' to save a sick horse. Seemed to--bring your life to life again. You told me what you studied in that fine old university you loved--the Vienna,--and why you became a revolutionist. The old dreams took hold o' you and you talked--way you used to, I suppose. The years, o' course, had rubbed some of it off. Your face as you went on about the vision--you called it, vision of what life could be. I knew that night there was things I never got wind of. When I went away--knew I ought to go home to bed--hayin' at daybreak. 'Go to bed?' I said to myself. 'Strike this dead when you've never had it before, may never have it again?' I climbed the hill. Blackhawk was there. GRANDMOTHER: Why, he was _dead_. SILAS: He was there--on his own old hill, with me and the stars. And I said to him-- GRANDMOTHER: Silas! SILAS: Says I to him, 'Yes--that's true; it's more yours than mine, you had it first and loved it best. But it's neither yours nor mine,--though both yours and mine. Not my hill, not your hill, but--hill of vision', said I to him. 'Here shall come visions of a better world than was ever seen by you or me, old Indian chief.' Oh, I was drunk, plum drunk. GRANDMOTHER: I should think you was. And what about the next day's hay? SILAS: A day in the hayfield is a day's hayin'--but a night on the hill-- FELIX: We don't have them often, do we, Uncle Silas? SILAS: I wouldn't 'a' had that one but for your father, Felix. Thank God they drove you out o' Hungary! And it's all so dog-gone _queer_. Ain't it queer how things blow from mind to mind--like seeds. Lord A'mighty--you don't know where they'll take hold. (_Children's voices off_.)