Or, if there was intent, it meant chiefly the scattering of seed, as if every plant wished to inherit the earth for itself. The very berries on her mother’s grave seemed to harbor some such purpose. The weeds were even worse, flinging their seeds afar in sudden spasms or catching the fur of passing rabbits and clinging to such carriers. Thistledowns drifted along the breeze like airplanes bearing invaders. Tiny spiders set themselves afloat and drifted in gossamer, borne on the congealed silver of their own bodies to conquer the world. Of all those seeds not one in thousands would survive, yet life poured them out unceasingly. They were produced unconsenting and uncomputed, and wasted unabashed. This star of hers, which at the distance of a few million miles seemed a jewel, was in reality vast and awful. The mist of life upon it was a mist of blind struggle. A good map of any mile of it would show beautiful weeds and men and bacteria all wasting their life in the struggle for possession. It was beautiful, but it was horrible. Chapter 80. Mercury And then, as the autumnal days grew lovelier, she could not help shifting the emphasis from the horror to the beauty. It seemed to her that she had never seen colors till now. Nothing was harsh, and all was balance. Her earth was full of happy marriages. Here a splash of crimson was offset by a field of grayish blue-green. Here purple lived with green-yellow, here blue with yellow-red. Whatever chemistry these married hues concealed, they concealed it like lovers. From the balance of colors she was led again to the balances of chemistry. Especially the balance called water held her thought as she daily watched the river approach its hour of enchainment. Evidently the balance was not perfect, for water acts like an acid and will slowly eat away glass. She pondered the balance of acids and bases, and finally begged Mr. Gillies to get her some zinc, and Ojeeg to get her some copper, that she might make a battery. The Scotchman complied, and on his next trip to town brought her a heavy bar of commercial zinc. But Ojeeg, leaving his wife to carry the mail, disappeared from home for several days and went on the war-path. From one old friend and another he ruthlessly took secret treasures—now a lump and now a spray of virgin copper. For some of them he had to pay, but what did he care? He had a pension of fifty-seven dollars every month, not to mention other government money and the rewards of planting. Never before was such an electrode hammered into shape! It did the work, and Ojeeg looked on in impassive silence when the acid began to gnaw the zinc into bubbles of hydrogen. Then when a bit of wire connected the two bars, and the bubbles shifted to the copper, he was sufficiently awed. He had always suspected that copper was full of devils.