so covered with stones and overgrown with wire-grass that I
could not have found it but for her guidance. But as we
climbed upward the air grew clearer, and more sweet, and I
questioned her of the things that had come to pass in my
absence. I asked her of the kind old man who had taken me
into his house when I came as a stranger. She said, softly,
"He is dead."

"And where are the men and women, his friends, who once
thronged this pathway? Are they also dead?"

"They also are dead."

"But where are the younger ones who sang here so gladly as
they marched upward? Surely they, are living?"

"They have forgotten."

"Where then are the young children whose fathers taught
them this way and bade them remember it. Have they forgotten?"

"They have forgotten."

"But why have you alone kept the hour of visitation? Why
have you not turned back with your companions? How have you
walked here solitary day after day?"

She turned to me with a divine regard, and laying her hand
gently over mine, she said, "I remember always."