GRANDMOTHER: There come those children up from the creek--soppin' wet, I warrant. Well, I don't know how children ever get raised. But we raise more of 'em than we used to. I buried three--first ten years I was here. Needn't 'a' happened--if we'd known what we know now, and if we hadn't been alone. (_With all her strength_.) I don't know what you mean--the hill's not yours! SILAS: It's the future's, mother--so's we can know more than we know now. GRANDMOTHER: We know it now. 'Twas then we didn't know it. I worked for that hill! And I tell you to leave it to your own children. SILAS: There's other land for my own children. This is for all the children. GRANDMOTHER: What's all the children to you? SILAS: (_derisively_) Oh, mother--what a thing for you to say! You who were never too tired to give up your own bed so the stranger could have a better bed. GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their way. FEJEVARY: So are we. (SILAS _turns to him with quick appreciation_.) GRANDMOTHER: That's just talk. We're settled now. Children of other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you'd want yours to. SILAS: I want other things more. I want to pay my debts 'fore I'm too old to know they're debts. GRANDMOTHER: (_momentarily startled_) Debts? Huh! More talk. You don't owe any man. SILAS: I owe him (_nodding to_ FEJEVARY). And the red boys here before me. GRANDMOTHER: Fiddlesticks. FELIX: You haven't read Darwin, have you, Uncle Silas? SILAS: Who? FELIX: Darwin, the great new man--and his theory of the survival of the fittest? SILAS: No. No, I don't know things like that, Felix. FELIX: I think he might make you feel better about the Indians. In the struggle for existence many must go down. The fittest survive. This--had to be. SILAS: Us and the Indians? Guess I don't know what you mean--fittest. FELIX: He calls it that. Best fitted to the place in which one finds one's self, having the qualities that can best cope with conditions--do things. From the beginning of life it's been like that. He shows the growth of life from forms that were hardly alive, the lowest animal forms--jellyfish--up to man. SILAS: Oh, yes, that's the thing the churches are so upset about--that we come from monkeys. FELIX: Yes. One family of ape is the direct ancestor of man. GRANDMOTHER: You'd better read your Bible, Felix. SILAS: Do people believe this? FELIX: The whole intellectual world is at war about it. The best scientists accept it. Teachers are losing their positions for believing it. Of course, ministers can't believe it. GRANDMOTHER: I should think not. Anyway, what's the use believing a thing that's so discouraging? FEJEVARY: (_gently_) But is it that? It almost seems to me we have to accept it because it is so encouraging. (_holding out his hand_) Why have we hands? GRANDMOTHER: Cause God gave them to us, I s'pose.