He turned in for the night and sleep drew him away at once from reality. And some time during the night he awoke out of his sleep to the reality of a great dream.
IV
THE BIRD
t was in the depths of a wonderful forest, green with summer and hoary with age. He was sitting on the ground in a small open space. No path led to this or away from it, but all around him grew grasses and plants which would be natural coverts for wild creatures. No human tread had ever crushed those plants.
The soft vivid light resting on the woods was not morning-light nor evening-light: it was clear light without the hours. Yet the time must have been near noonday; for as Webster looked straight up toward the unseen sky, barred from his eyes by the forest roof of leaves, slender beams of sunlight filtered perpendicularly down, growing mistier as they descended until they could be traced no longer even as luminous vapour; no palest radiance from them reached the grass.
He could not see far in any direction. At the edge of the open space where he sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the standing live ones—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents of the rising forest, passing back into the soil of the planet toward the rocks.