"I reckon it will be easier under the stars than under the hot sun," said Abe. "Our legs have had a long rest anyhow."
They enjoyed the coolness and beauty of the summer night.
"Going home is the end of all journeys," said Abe as they tramped along. "Did it ever occur to you that every living creature has its home? The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field and forest, the creepers in the grass, all go home. Most of them turn toward it when the day wanes. The call of home is the one voice heard and respected all the way down the line of life. And, ye know, the most wonderful and mysterious thing in nature is the power that fool animals have to go home through great distances, like the turtle that swam from the Bay of Biscay to his home off Van Dieman's Land. Somehow coming over in a ship he had blazed a trail through the pathless deep more than ten thousand miles long. It's the one miraculous gift—the one call that's irresistible. Don't you hear it now? I never lie down in the darkness without thinking of home when I am away."
"And it's hard to change your home when you're wonted to it," said Harry.
"Yes, it's a little like dying when you pull up the roots and move. It's been hard on your folks."
This remark brought them up to the greatest of mysteries. They tramped in silence for a moment. Abe broke in upon it with these words:
"I reckon there must be another home somewhere to go to after we have broke the last camp here and a kind of a bird's compass to help us find it. I reckon we'll hear the call of it as we grow older."
He stopped and took off his hat and looked up at the stars and added:
"If it isn't so I don't see why the long procession of life keeps harping on this subject of home. I think I see the point of the whole thing. It isn't the place or the furniture that makes it home, but the love and peace that's in it. By and by our home isn't here any more. It has moved. Our minds begin to beat about in the undiscovered countries looking for it. Somehow we get it located—each man for himself."
For another space they hurried along without speaking.