He fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the valley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a threadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind which rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain spring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall mountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson tart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they carried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth. Drew began again. "Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better brain--and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a thousand per cent, ahead of what it is now--I am convinced that I could remember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches right and left. The tree conscious from leaf to root, from root to leaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro--and, as somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up and down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high and low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!" He looked as though he rode in that forest. "Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the forests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree! That's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil. You're all things and all people. You share them and they share you. You're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down and lay hold upon you--and still you shall find it home and yourself!'" On they rode over Bear Mountain, and at last up Rock. Five hundred feet below the top lay a green depression named Hall's Gap. Here a half-dozen cabins made Hall's Town. The people now owned Rock Mountain, its rich forests and rushing waters. A road was in the making and that and other department plans brought to Hall's Gap preliminary groups, the present group being a surveying, engineering, and reporting one, with Malcolm Smith for head. Under him he had Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew, with axmen and spademen hired from the mountain. The cabins in the Gap lodged them all.