“Draw near, thou Hare.”
Jorsen asked me what happened after this justification of the Hare,
which, if I heard aright, appeared to suggest that by the decree of
some judge unknown, the woes of such creatures are not unnoted and
despised, or left unsolaced. Of course I had to answer him that I could
not tell.
Perhaps nothing happened at all. Perhaps all the wonders I seemed to
see, even the Road by which souls travel from There to Here and from
Here to There, and the Gates that were burned away, and the City of the
Mansions that descended, were but signs and symbols of mysteries which
as yet we cannot grasp or understand.
Whatever may be the truth as to this matter of my visions, I need
hardly add, however, that no one can be more anxious than I am myself
to learn in what way the Red-faced Man, speaking on behalf of our
dominant race, and the Hare, speaking as an appointed advocate of the
subject animal creation, finished their argument in the light of fuller
knowledge. Much also do I wonder which of them was proved to be right,
a difficult matter whereon I feel quite incompetent to express any
views.
But you see at that moment I woke up. The edge of the Road on which I
was standing seemed to give way beneath me, and I fell into space as
one does in a nightmare. It is a very unpleasant sensation.
I remember noticing afterwards that I could not have been long asleep.
When I began to dream I had only just blown out the candle, and when I
awoke again there was still a smouldering spark upon its wick.
But, as I have said, in that spirit-land whither I had journeyed is to
be found neither time nor space nor any other familiar thing.