We were surrounded by the gloom and mystery of the forest. If one left the road or trail for even a short walk he needed a compass to guide him. That little brass box with its needle, swaying and seeming to quiver with excitement as it felt its way to the north side of the circle and pointed unerringly at last toward its favorite star, filled me with wonder.
"Why does it point toward the north star?" I used to ask.
"That's a secret," said Uncle Peabody. "I wouldn't wonder if the gate o' heaven was up there. Maybe it's a light in God's winder. Who knows? I kind o' mistrust it's the direction we're all goin' in."
"You talk like one o' them Universalists," said Aunt Deel. "They're gettin' thick as flies around here."
"Wal, I kind o' believe—" he paused at the edge of what may have been a dangerous opinion.
I shook the box and the needle swung and quivered back and forth and settled with its point in the north again. Oh, what a mystery! My eyes grew big at the thought of it.
"Do folks take compasses with 'em when they die?" I asked.
"No, they don't need 'em then," said Uncle Peabody. "Everybody has a kind of a compass in his own heart—same as watermelons and chickens have. It shows us the way to be useful, and I guess the way o' usefulness is the way to heaven every time."
"An' the way o' uselessness is the way to hell," Aunt Deel added.
One evening in the early summer the great Silas Wright had come to our house from the village of Russell, where he had been training a company of militia.