He went up the river as far as the overseer's house. Here, upon the bench built around the sycamore, he found old Mr. Morrowcombe, who had stayed over with the Carters. In his old brown clothes, with hair and long beard, pale as the pale patches of the sycamore trunk and boughs, leaning forward upon his stick, he looked, as it were, the huge old tree come forth into human form. Curtin sat down beside this old man. The cane upon which the elder leaned was now close to his eye and he saw that it was covered with finely cut words. Thick, and shaped like a shepherd's crook, the graving ran all over it. "May I look?" "Surely!" said Mr. Morrowcombe, and gave it into his hand. "The year I was in prison at Camp Chase I carved around it the twenty-third psalm." Curtin examined the quite beautifully done work. "Trust and Consolation in your hand--walking with them for fifty years!" He sat musing. Mr. Morrowcombe's old, gentle voice began like the zephyr in the sycamore, whose beginning you could hardly guess. "Yes, sir! That staff's me now. Just as a good dog that goes with you gets to be you. It's helped me, week days and Sundays; that staff I made myself. I made it myself, and I didn't make it. I didn't make the tree that grew it and I didn't make the psalm; nor David that made the psalm. But I cut the staff from the tree and I carved the words there. So I reckon I have my part." "You cut it in prison?" "Do you see that piece just thar?" The old finger traced the line. "'_Thou settest me a table in the presence of mine enemies._' I cut that deep and fierce!" He looked at the river and then again at Curtin. "Now, whatever it means, I know it doesn't mean what then I wanted it to mean!" His old, gentle face grew meditative, contemplative. A more tranquil form and face it would have been hard to find. "I kind of sense the meaning, but I can't put it into words. But when you feel at last with folks and things you can't feel against them. When I was young I must have hated a lot of folk! I don't now." "What is your healing herb?" "Put yourself in his place. Don't oust him from the place, but understand him. Flow into him deep! Then you'll find that there is Something inside or above you and him which understands and straightens out both of you. Next thing you find is that you haven't got any real controversy." "Do you call that something God?" "That's what I call it. I used to think that you _had_ to call it God. I don't now. But it's a mighty good word! We've hallowed it. It's the biggest word we've got." "Mr. Morrowcombe, when we join God, don't you think we shall say 'I'?" "_That_ will say 'I.' Yes." They sat gazing at the river and the colored hills. "Ain't this a lovely place?" said Mr. Morrowcombe. "It's like Beulah Land!" "Do you ever talk to Mr. Linden?" "Surely! Him and Marget Land. They're of those in our time who are remembered early."