We had reached by this time, Herman and I, a large faith in the reasonableness of nature. Whatever came to us, we felt the processes of life rising to heal it like the sap to a tree’s scar.
We kept close together, saying little, going all that day in intermitting fog and rain, until the sky cleared well toward sunset. We had come to a halt an hour past on a wild open headland, and saw huge uncouth shapes of cloud hurrying to caverns of the sun. Fog lay thick in the hollows, hills islanded above it; as it cleared and sunk and the dry land appeared we saw how large and good the country was; hills upon hills, and hills beyond, wooded and bare, broken and rolling land. Nowhere was there a man trace, no smoke going up from the cañons, nor window lights below the trees. To the west the fog lay unpierced, stretching seaward, level and roughed on the surface like waves, beginning to take a red tinge from the sun. It was not until then that we had some hint of why we had halted in this place. We saw the Outliers drawn up into some sort of order, with the Far-Folk opposing, and the two chiefs between.
We hurried and came up to that privileged place near Trastevera which her favor reserved for us, and I observed that the eyes of Oca burned red like a weasel’s, as he turned them this way and that on the emerging hills, fingering his great beard. The glitter of wet on his shoulders like bronze, touched with reflected color of the westering fires, the bearskins that clothed him below, and the blowing of long lip locks gave him an appearance most wild and befitting the hour. He looked, and Persilope looked, standing poised and at ease as a stag gazing.
“It is a good land,” said the King of the Outliers.
“As you say, large,” admitted the King of the Far-Folk, looking askance, his hands forever busy with his beard.
“Large enough for two peoples to live in it, each unmolested?”
Oca’s eyes roved over the whole circle of the outlook before he answered.
“Oca,” said the young man, not the least troubled by this curtness nor put out by it, “you have done us as much harm as you could, which is not so much as you wished. I leave you to count the good you have got by it. It was an old quarrel, but it occurs to me that since the chief cause of it has ceased to exist, there is little use in our quarreling. But there is no reason why we should be friends. Do you follow me?”