Opening…

Chapter I

Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind Wakes all the green strings of the forest lyre. LOWELL.

The light of an early Spring morning, shining fair on upland and lowland, promised a good day for the farmer's work. And where a film of thin smoke stole up over the tree-tops, into the sunshine which had not yet got so low, there stood the farmer's house.

It was a little brown house, built surely when its owner's means were not greater than his wishes, and probably some time before his family had reached the goodly growth it boasted now. All of them were gathered at the breakfast-table.

"Boys, you may take the oxen, and finish ploughing that upland field -- I shall be busy all day sowing wheat in the bend meadow."

"Then I'll bring the boat for you, papa, at noon," said a child on the other side of the table.

"And see if you can keep those headlands as clean as I have left them."

"Yes, sir. Shall you want the horses, father, or shall we take both the oxen?"

"Both? -- both pairs, you mean -- yes; I shall want the horses. I mean to make a finish of that wheat lot."

"Mamma, you must send us our dinner," said a fourth speaker, and the eldest of the boys; -- "it'll be too confoundedly hot to come home."

"Yes, it's going to be a warm day," said the father.

"Who's to bring it to you, Will?" said the mother.

"Asahel -- can't he -- when he brings the boat for papa?"

"The boat won't go to the top of the hill," said Asahel; "and it's as hot for me as for other folks, I guess."

"You take the young oxen, Winthrop," said the farmer, pushing back his chair from the table.

"Why, sir?" said the eldest son promptly.

"I want to give you the best," answered his father, with a touch of comicality about the lines of his face.

"Are you afraid I shall work them too hard?"

"That's just what I'm afraid they'd do for you."

He went out; and his son attended to his breakfast in silence, with a raised eyebrow and a curved lip.

"What do you want, Winthrop?" the mother presently called to her second son, who had disappeared, and was rummaging somewhere behind the scenes.

"Only a basket, mamma," -- came from the pantry.

His mother got up from table, and basket in hand followed him, to where he was busy with a big knife in the midst of her stores. Slices of bread were in course of buttering, and lay in ominous number piled up on the yellow shelf. Hard by stood a bowl of cold boiled potatoes. He was at work with dexterity as neat-handed and as quick as a woman's.

"There's no pork there, Governor," his mother whispered as he stooped to the cupboard, -- "your father made an end of that last night; -- but see -- here --"

And from another quarter she brought out a pie. Being made of dried apples, it was not too juicy to cut; and being cut into huge pieces they were stowed into the basket, lapping over each other, till little room was left; and cheese and gingerbread went in to fill that. And then as her hands pressed the lid down and his hands took the basket, the eyes met, and a quick little smile of great brilliancy, that entirely broke up the former calm lines of his face, answered her; for he said nothing. And the mother's "Now go!" -- was spoken as if she had enough of him left at home to keep her heart warm for the rest of the day.

The two ploughmen set forth with their teams. Or ploughboys rather; for the younger of them as yet had seen not sixteen years. His brother must have been several in advance of him.

The farmhouse was placed on a little woody and rocky promontory jutting out into a broad river from the east shore. Above it, on the higher grounds of the shore, the main body of the farm lay, where a rich tableland sloped back to a mountainous ridge that framed it in, about half a mile from the water. Cultivation had stretched its hands near to the top of this ridge and driven back the old forest, that yet stood and looked over from the other side. One or two fields were but newly cleared, as the black stumps witnessed. Many another told of good farming, and of a substantial reward for the farmer; at what cost obtained they did not tell.

Towards one of these upland fields, half made ready for a crop of spring grain, the boys took their way. On first leaving the house, the road led gently along round the edge of a little bay, of which the promontory formed the northern horn. Just before reaching the head of the bay, where the road made a sharp turn and began to ascend to the tableland, it passed what was called the bend meadow.

It was a very lovely morning of early Spring, one of those days when nature seems to have hushed herself to watch the buds she has set a swelling. Promising to be warm, though a little freshness from the night still lingered in the air. Everywhere on the hills the soft colours of the young Spring- time were starting out, that delicate livery which is so soon worn. They were more soft to-day under a slight sultry haziness of the atmosphere -- a luxurious veil that Spring had coyly thrown over her face; she was always a shy damsel. It soothed the light, it bewitched the distance, it lay upon the water like a foil to its brightness, it lay upon the mind with a subtle charm winning it to rest and enjoy. It etherealized Earth till it was no place to work in. But there went the oxen, and the ploughmen.

The one as silently as the other; till the bay was left behind and they came to the point where the road began to go up to the tableland. Just under the hill here was a spring of delicious water, always flowing; and filling a little walled- up basin.

Will, or Will Rufus, as his father had long ago called him, had passed on and begun to mount the hill. Winthrop stopped his oxen till he should fill a large stone jug for the day. The jug had a narrow neck, and he was stooping at the edge of the basin, waiting for the water to flow in, when his head and shoulders made a sudden plunge and the jug and he soused in together. Not for any want of steadiness in either of them; the cause of the plunge was a worthless fellow who was coming by at the moment. He had a house a little way off on the bay. He lived by fishing and farming alternately; and was often, and was then, employed by Mr. Landholm as an assistant in his work. He was on his way to the bend meadow, and passing close by Winthrop at the spring, the opportunity was too good to be resisted; he tipped him over into the water.

The boy soon scrambled out, and shaking himself like a great water-dog, and with about as much seeming concern, fixed a calm eye on his delighted enemy.

"Well, Sam Doolittle, -- what good has that done anybody?"

"Ha'n't it done you none, Governor?"

"What do you think?"

"Well! I think you be a cool one -- and the easiest customer ever I see."

"I've a mind it shall do somebody good; so see you don't give my father any occasion to be out with you; for if you do, I'll give him more."

"Ay, ay," said the man comfortably, "you won't tell on me. Hi! here's somebody!"

It was Rufus who suddenly joined the group, whip in hand, and looking like a young Achilles in ploughman's coat and trousers. Not Achilles' port could be more lordly; the very fine bright hazel eye was on fire; the nostril spoke, and the lip quivered; though he looked only at his brother.

"What's the matter, Winthrop?"

"I've been in the water, as you see," said his brother composedly. "I want a change of clothes, rather."

"How did you get into the water?"

"Why, head foremost -- which wasn't what I meant to do."

"Sam, you put him in!"

"He, he! -- well, Mr. Rufus, maybe I helped him a leetle."

"You scoundrel!" said Rufus, drawing the whip through his fingers; "what did you do it for?"

"He, he! -- I didn't know but what it was you, Will."

For all answer, the ox-whip was laid about Sam's legs, with the zest of furious indignation; a fury there was no standing against. It is true, Rufus's frame was no match for the hardened one of Mr. Doolittle, though he might be four or five years the elder of the two boys; but the spirit that was in him cowed Sam, in part, and in part amused him. He made no offer to return the blows; he stood, or rather jumped, as the whip slung itself round his legs, crying out,

"Lay it on, Will! -- Lay it on! Hi -- That's right -- Tuck it on, Will! --"

Till Will's arm was tired; and flinging away from them, in a towering passion still, he went up the hill after his oxen. Sam rubbed his legs.

"I say, Governor, we're quits now, ben't we?" he said in a sort of mock humble good-humour, as Winthrop was about to follow his brother.

"Yes, yes. Be off with yourself!"

"I wish it had ha' been 'tother one, anyhow," muttered Sam.

Not a word passed between the brothers about either the ducking or the flagellation. They spoke not but to their oxen. Rufus's mouth was in the heroic style yet, all the way up the hill; and the lips of the other only moved once or twice to smile.

The day was sultry, as it had promised, and the uphill lay of the ground made the ploughing heavy, and frequent rests of the oxen were necessary. Little communication was held between the ploughmen nevertheless; the day wore on, and each kept steadily to his work and seemingly to his own thoughts. The beautiful scene below them, which they were alternately facing and turning their backs upon, was too well known even to delay their attention; and for the greater part of the day probably neither of them saw much beyond his plough and his furrow.

They were at work on a very elevated point of view, from which the channel of the river and the high grounds on the other side were excellently seen. Valley there was hardly any; the up-springing walls of green started from the very border of the broad white stream which made its way between them. They were nowhere less than two hundred feet high; above that, moulded in all manner of heights and hollows; sometimes reaching up abruptly to twelve or fourteen hundred feet, and sometimes stretching away in long gorges and gentle declivities, -- hills grouping behind hills. In Summer all these were a mass of living green, that the eye could hardly arrange; under Spring's delicate marshalling every little hill took its own place, and the soft swells of ground stood back the one from the other, in more and more tender colouring. The eye leapt from ridge to ridge of beauty; not green now, but in the very point of the bursting leaf, taking what hue it pleased the sun. It was a dainty day; and it grew more dainty as the day drew towards its close and the lights and shadows stretched athwart the landscape again. The sun-touched lines and spots of the mountains now, in some places, were of a bright orange, and the shadows between them deep neutral tint or blue. And the river, apparently, had stopped running to reflect.

The oxen were taking one of their rests, in the latter part of the day, and Winthrop was sitting on the beam of his plough, when for the first time Rufus came and joined him. He sat down in silence and without so much as looking at his brother; and both in that warm and weary day sat a little while quietly looking over the water; or perhaps at the little point of rest, the little brown spot among the trees on the promontory, where home and mother and little baby sister, and the end of the day, and the heart's life, had their sole abiding-place. A poor little shrine, to hold so much!

Winthrop's eyes were there, his brother's were on the distance. When did such two ever sit together on the beam of one plough, before or since! Perhaps the eldest might have seen nineteen summers, but his face had nothing of the boy, beyond the fresh colour and fine hue of youth. The features were exceedingly noble, and even classically defined; the eye as beautiful now in its grave thoughtfulness as it had been a few hours before in its fire. The mouth was never at rest; it was twitching or curving at the corners now with the working of some hidden cogitations. The frame of the younger brother was less developed; it promised to be more athletic than that of the elder, with perhaps somewhat less grace of outline; and the face was not so regularly handsome. A very cool and clear grey eye aided the impression of strength; and the mouth, less beautifully moulded than that of Rufus, was also infinitely less demonstrative. Rufus's mouth, in silence, was for ever saying something. Winthrop's for the most part kept its fine outlines unbroken, though when they did give way it was to singular effect. The contrast between the faces was striking, even now when both were in repose.

The elder was the first to break silence, speaking slowly and without moving his eye from its bent.

"Governor, -- what do you suppose lies behind those mountains?"

"What?" -- said Winthrop quickly.

The other smiled.

"Your slow understanding can make a quick leap now and then."

"I can generally understand you," said his brother quietly.

Rufus added no more for a little, and Winthrop let him alone.

"We've got the farm in pretty good order now," he remarked presently in a considerate tone, folding his arms and looking about him.

"Papa has," observed Winthrop. "Yes -- if those stumps were out once. We ought to have good crops this year, of most things."

"I am sure I have spent four or five years of my life in hard work upon it," said the other.

"Your life ain't much the worse of it," said Winthrop, laughingly.

Rufus did not answer the laugh. He looked off to the hills again, and his lips seemed to close in upon his thoughts.

"Papa has spent more than that," said the younger brother gravely. "How hard he has worked -- to make this farm!"

"Well, he has made it."

"Yes, but he has paid a dozen years of his life for it. And mamma! --"

"It was a pretty tough subject to begin with," said the elder, looking about him again. "But it's a nice farm now; -- it's the handsomest farm in the county; -- it ought to pay considerable now, after this."

"It hasn't brought us in much so far," observed Winthrop, "except just to keep along; -- and a pretty tight fit at that."

"The house ought to be up here," said Rufus, considering the little distant brown speck; -- "it would be worth twice as much."

"What would?"

"Why! -- the farm!"

"The house wouldn't," said Winthrop, -- "not to my notions."

"It's confoundedly out of the way, down there, a mile off from the work."

"Only a quarter of that, and a little better," said Winthrop calmly.

"A little worse! -- There's a great loss of time. There would be twice as much work done if the house was up here."

"I couldn't stand it," said Winthrop. "How came it the house was put down there?"

"Papa bought the point first and built the house, before ever he pushed his acquirements so far as this. He would be wise, now, to let that, and build another up here somewhere."

"It wouldn't pay," said the younger brother; "and for one, I'm not sorry."

"If the farm was clear," said the elder, "I'd stand the chance of it's paying; it's that keeps us down."

"What?"

"That debt."

"What debt?"

"Why, the interest on the mortgage."

"I don't know what you are talking of."

"Why," said Rufus a little impatiently, "don't you know that when papa bought the property he couldn't pay off the whole price right down, and so he was obliged to leave the rest owing, and give security."

"What security?"

"Why, a mortgage on the farm, as I told you."

"What do you mean by a mortgage?"

"Why, he gave a right over the farm -- a right to sell the farm at a certain time, if the debt was not paid and the interest upon it."

"What is the debt?"

"Several thousands, I believe."

"And how much does he have to pay upon that every year?"

"I don't know exactly -- one or two, two or three hundred dollars; and that keeps us down, you see, till the mortgage is paid off."

"I didn't know that."

They sat silent a little time. Then Winthrop said,

"You and I must pay that money off, Will."

"Ay -- but still there's a question which is the best way to do it," said Rufus.

"The best way, I've a notion," said Winthrop looking round at his cattle, -- "is not to take too long noon-spells in the afternoon."

"Stop a bit. Sit down! -- I want to speak to you. Do you want to spend all your life following the oxen?"

Winthrop stopped certainly, but he waited in silence.

"I don't!"

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know -- something --"

"What is the matter, Will?"

"Matter?" -- said the other, while his fine features shewed the changing lights and shadows of a summer day, -- "why Winthrop, that I am not willing to stay here and be a ploughman all my life, when I might be something better!"

The other's heart beat. But after an instant, he answered calmly,

"How can you be anything better, Will?"

"Do you think all the world lies under the shadow of Wut-a- qut-o?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think all the world is like this little world which those hills shut in?"

"No," -- said Winthrop, his eye going over to the blue depths and golden ridge-tops, which it did not see; "-- but --"

"Where does that river lead to?"

"It leads to Mannahatta. What of that?"

"There is a world there, Winthrop, -- another sort of world, -- where people know something; where other things are to be done than running plough furrows; where men may distinguish themselves! -- where men may read and write; and do something great; and grow to be something besides what nature made them! -- I want to be in that world."

They both paused.

"But what will you do, Rufus, to get into that world? -- we are shut in here."

"I am not shut in!" said the elder brother; and brow and lip and nostril said it over again; -- "I will live for something greater than this!"

There was a deep-drawn breath from the boy at his side.

"So would I, if I could. But what can we do?"

How difficult it was to do anything, both felt. But after a deliberate pause of some seconds, Rufus answered,

"There is only one thing to do. -- I shall go to College."

"To College! -- Will?"

The changes in the face of the younger boy were sudden and startling. One moment the coronation of hope; the next moment despair had thrown the coronet off; one more, and the hand of determination, -- like Napoleon's, -- had placed it firmly on his brow; and it was never shaken again. But he said nothing; and both waited a little, till thoughts could find words.

"Rufus, -- do papa and mamma know about this?"

"Not yet."

"What will they think of it?"

"I don't know -- they must think of it as I do. My mind is made up. I can't stay here."

"But some preparation is necessary, Rufus, ain't it? -- we must know more than we do before we can go to College, mustn't we? How will you get that?"

"I don't know, I will get it. Preparation! -- yes!"

"Father will want us both at home this summer."

"Yes -- this summer -- I suppose we must. We must do something -- we must talk to them at home about it, -- gradually."

"If we had books, we could do a great deal at home."

"Yes, if, -- But we haven't. And we must have more time. We couldn't do it at home."

"Papa wants us this summer. -- And I don't see how he can spare us at all, Rufus."

"I am sure he will let us go," said the other steadily, though with a touch of trouble in his face.

"We are just beginning to help him."

"We can help him much better the other way," said Rufus quickly. "Farming is the most miserable slow way of making money that ever was contrived."

"How do you propose to make money?" inquired his brother coolly.

"I don't know! I am not thinking of making money at present!"

"It takes a good deal to go to College, don't it?"

"Yes."

And again there was a little silence. And the eyes of both were fixed on the river and the opposite hills, while they saw only that distant world and the vague barrier between.

"But I intend to go, Winthrop," said his brother, looking at him, with fire enough in his face to burn up obstacles.

"Yes, you will go," the younger said calmly. The cool grey eye did not speak the internal "So will I!" -- which stamped itself upon his heart. They got up from the plough beam.

"I'll try for't," was Rufus's conclusion, as he shook himself.

"You'll get it," said Winthrop.

There was much love as well as ambition in the delighted look with which his brother rewarded him. They parted to their work. They ploughed the rest of their field: -- what did they turn over besides the soil?

They wended their slow way back with the oxen when the evening fell; but the yoke was off their own necks. The lingering western light coloured another world than the morning had shined upon. No longer bondsmen of the soil, they trode it like masters. They untackled their oxen and let them out, with the spirit of men whose future work was to be in a larger field. Only Hope's little hand had lifted the weight from their heads. And Hope's only resting point was determination.

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Chapter II

A quiet smile played round his lips, As the eddies and dimples of the tide Play round the bows of ships, That steadily at anchor ride. And with a voice that was full of glee, He answered, "ere long we will launch A vessel as goodly, and strong, and staunch, As ever weathered a wintry sea!" LONGFELLOW.

"The ploughing's all done; thank fortune!" exclaimed Rufus as he came into the kitchen.

"Well, don't leave your hat there in the middle of the floor," said his mother.

"Yes, it just missed knocking the tea-cups and saucers off the table," said little Asahel.

"It hasn't missed knocking you off your balance," said his brother tartly. "Do you know where your own hat is?"

"It hain't knocked me off anything!" said Asahel. "It didn't touch me!"

"Do you know where your own hat is?"

"No."

"What does it matter, Will?" said his mother.

"It's hanging out of doors, on the handle of the grindstone."

"It ain't!"

"Yes it is; -- on the grindstone."

"No it isn't," said Winthrop coming in, "for I've got it here. There -- see to it, Asahel. Mamma, papa's come. We've done ploughing."

And down went his hat, but not on the floor.

"Look at Winifred, Governor -- she has been calling for you all day."

The boy turned to a flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked, little toddling thing of three or four years old, at his feet, and took her up, to the perfect satisfaction of both parties. Her head nestled in his neck and her little hand patted his cheek with great approval and contentment.

"Mamma," said Asahel, "what makes you call Winthrop Governor? -- he isn't a governor."

"Ask your father. And run and tell him tea's just ready."

The father came in; and the tea was made, and the whole party sat down to table. A homely, but a very cheerful and happy board. The supper was had in the kitchen; the little remains of the fire that had boiled the kettle were not amiss after the damps of evening fell; and the room itself, with its big fireplace, high dark-painted wainscoting, and even the clean board floor, was not the least agreeable in the house. And the faces and figures that surrounded the table were manly, comely, and intelligent, in a high degree.

"Well, -- I've got through with that wheat field," said Mr. Landholm, as he disposed of a chicken bone.

"Have you got through sowing?" said his wife.

"Sowing! -- no! -- Winthrop, I guess you must go into the garden to-morrow -- I can't attend to anything else till I get my grain in."

"Won't you plant some sweet corn this year, Mr. Landholm? -- it's a great deal better for cooking."

"Well, I don't know -- I guess the field corn's sweet enough. I haven't much time to attend to sugar things. What I look for is substantials."

"Aren't sweet things substantial, sir?" said Winthrop.

"Well -- yes, -- in a sort they are," said his father laughing, and looking at the little fat creature who was still in her brother's arms and giving him the charge of her supper as well as his own. "I know some sweet things I shouldn't like to do without."

"Talking of substantials," said Mrs. Landholm, "there's wood wanting to be got. I am almost out. I had hardly enough to cook supper."

"Don't want much fire in this weather," said the father, "However -- we can't get along very well without supper. -- Rufus, I guess you'll have to go up into the woods to-morrow with the ox-sled -- you and Sam Doolittle -- back of the pine wood -- you'll find enough dead trees there, I guess."

"I think," said Rufus, "that if you think of it, what are called substantial things are the least substantial of any -- they are only the scaffolding of the other."

"Of what other?" said his father.

"Of the things which really last, sir, -- the things which belong to the mind -- things which have to do with something besides the labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow."

"The labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow are pretty necessary though," said his father dryly; "we must eat, in the first place. You must keep the body alive before the mind can do much -- at least I have found it so in my own experience."

"But you don't think the less of the other kind of work, sir, do you?" said Winthrop looking up; -- "when one can get at it?"

"No, my boy," said the father, -- "no, Governor; no man thinks more highly of it than I do. It has always been my desire that you and Will should be better off in this respect than I have ever been; -- my great desire; and I haven't given it up, neither."

A little silence of all parties.

"What are the things which 'really last,' Rufus?" said his mother.

Rufus made some slight and not very direct answer, but the question set Winthrop to thinking.

He thought all the evening; or rather thought and fancy took a kind of whirligig dance, where it was hard to tell which was which. Visions of better opportunities than his father ever had; -- of reaching a nobler scale of being than his own early life had promised him; -- of higher walks than his young feet had trod: they made his heart big. There came the indistinct possibility of raising up with him the little sister he held in his arms, not to the life of toil which their mother had led, but to some airy unknown region of cultivation and refinement and elegant leisure; -- hugely unknown, and yet surely laid hold of by the mind's want. But though fancy saw her for a moment in some strange travestie of years and education and circumstances, that was only a flash of fancy -- not dwelt upon. Other thoughts were more near and pressing, though almost as vague. In vain he endeavoured to calculate expenses that he did not know, wants that he could not estimate, difficulties that loomed up with no certain outline, means that were far beyond ken. It was but confusion; except his purpose, clear and steady as the sun, though as yet it lighted not the way but only the distant goal; that was always in sight. And under all these thoughts, little looked at yet fully recognized, his mother's question; and a certain security that she had that which would 'really last.' He knew it. And oddly enough, when he took his candle from her hand that night, Winthrop, though himself no believer unless with head belief, thanked God in his heart that his mother was a Christian.

Gradually the boys disclosed their plan; or rather the elder of the boys; for Winthrop being so much the younger, for the present was content to be silent. But their caution was little needed. Rufus was hardly more ready to go than his parents were to send him, -- if they could; and in their case, as in his, the lack of power was made up by will. Rufus should have an education. He should go to College. Not more cheerfully on his part than on theirs the necessary privations were met, the necessary penalty submitted to. The son should stand on better ground than the father, though the father were himself the stepping-stone that he might reach it.

It had nothing to do with Winthrop, all this. Nothing was said of him. To send one son to College was already a great stretch of effort, and of possibility; to send two was far beyond both. Nobody thought of it. Except the one left out of their thoughts.

The summer passed in the diligent companionship of the oxen and Sam Doolittle. But when the harvests were gathered, and the fall work was pretty well done; the winter grain in the ground, and the November winds rustling the dry leaves from the trees, -- the strongest branch was parted from the family tree, in the hope that it might take root and thrive better on its own stock elsewhere. It was cheerfully done, all round. The father took bravely the added burden with the lessened means; the mother gave her strength and her eyesight to make the needed preparations; and to supply the means for them, all pinched themselves; and Winthrop had laid upon him the threefold charge of his own, his brother's, and his father's duty. For Mr. Landholm had been chosen a member of the State Legislature; and he too would be away from home all winter. What sort of a winter it would be, no one stopped to think, but all were willing to bear.

The morning came of the day before the dreaded Saturday, and no one cared to look at another. It was a relief, though a hated one, to see a neighbour come in. Even that, Winthrop shunned; he was cleaning the harness of the wagon, and he took it out into the broad stoop outside of the kitchen door. His mother and brother and the children soon scattered to other parts of the house.

"So neighbour," said Mr. Underhill, -- "I hear tell one of your sons is goin' off, away from you?"

"Yes," -- said Mr. Landholm, pride and sorrow struggling together in his manner, -- "I believe he is."

"Where's he goin'?"

"To Asphodel -- in the first place."

"Asphodel, eh? -- What's at Asphodel?"

"What do you mean?"

"What's he goin' there for?"

"To pursue his studies -- there's an Academy at Asphodel."

"An Academy. -- Hum. -- And so he's goin' after larnin' is he? And what'll the farmer do without him to hum?"

"Do the best I can -- send for you, neighbour Underhill."

"Ha, ha! -- well, I reckon I've got enough to do to attend to my own."

"I guess you don't do much but fish, do you? -- there under the mountain?"

"Well, you see, I hain't a great deal of ground. You can't run corn straight up a hill, can you? -- without somethin' to stand on?"

"Not very well."

"There be folks that like that kind o' way o' farming -- but I never did myself."

"No, I'll warrant you," said Mr. Landholm, with a little attempt at a laugh.

"Well -- you say there's an Academy at Asphodel; then he aint going to -- a -- what do you call it? -- Collegiate Institution?"

"No, not just yet; by and by he'll go to College, I expect. -- That's what he wants to do."

"And you want it too, I suppose?"

"Yes -- I'll do the best I can by my children. I can't do as I would by them all," said the father, with a mixture of pride expressed and pride not expressed, -- "but I'll try to make a man of Will!"

"And t'other'll make a man of himself," said Mr. Underhill, as he saw Winthrop quit the stoop. "He'll never run a plough up the side of a house. But what kind of a man are you going to make of Will? -- a great man?"

"Ah, I don't know!" said Mr. Landholm with a sigh. "That must be as Providence directs."

"Hum -- I should say that Providence directs you to keep 'em both to hum," said Mr. Underhill; -- "but that's not my affair. Well, I'm going. -- I hear you are goin' to be in Vantassel this winter?"

"Yes -- I'm going to make laws for you," Mr. Landholm answered laughing.

"Well --" said Mr. Underhill taking his hat, -- "I wish they'd put you up for President -- I'd vote for you!"

"Thank you. Why?"

"'Cause I should expect you'd give me somethin' nother and make a great man of me!"

With a laugh at his own wit, Mr. Underhill departed.

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Chapter III

But who shall so forecast the years, And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand through time to catch The far-off interest of tears? TENNYSON.

The day came.

The farewell dinner was got ready -- the best of the season it must be, for the honour of all parties and the love of one; but it mocked them. Mrs. Landholm's noble roast pig, and sweet chickens, and tea and fine bread; they were something to be remembered, not enjoyed, and to be remembered for ever, as part of one strong drop of life's bittersweet mixture. The travellers, for Mr. Landholm was to accompany his son, had already dressed themselves in their best; and the other eyes, when they could, gazed with almost wondering pride on the very fine and graceful figure of the young seeker of fortune. But eyes could do little, and lips worse than little. The pang of quitting the table, and the hurried and silent good-byes, were over at last; and the wagon was gone.

It seemed that the whole household was gone. The little ones had run to some corner to cry; Winthrop was nowhere; and the mother of the family stood alone and still by the table in the kitchen where they had left her.

An old black woman, the sole house servant of the family, presently came in, and while taking up two or three of the plates, cast looks of affectionate pity at her mistress and friend. She had been crying herself, but her sorrow had taken a quiet form.

"Don't ye!" she said in a troubled voice, and laying her shrivelled hand timidly on Mrs. Landholm's shoulder, -- "don't ye, Mis' Landholm. He's in the Lord's hand, -- and just you let him be there."

Mrs. Landholm threw her apron over her face and went out of the kitchen into her own room. The old woman continued to go round the table, gathering the plates, but very evidently busy with something else; and indeed humming or talking to herself, in a voice far from steady,

"'There is a happy land, Where parting is unknown --'"

She broke off and sat down and put her face in her hands and wept.

"Oh Lord! -- oh good Lord! -- I wish I was there! -- Be still Karen -- that's very wicked -- wait, wait. 'They shall not be ashamed that wait for him,' he said, -- They will not be ashamed," she repeated, looking up, while the tears streamed down her cheeks. "I will wait. But oh! -- I wisht I had patience! I want to get straight out of trouble, -- I do. Not yet, Karen, -- not yet. 'When he giveth quietness, then who can make trouble?' That's it -- that's my way."

She went about her business and quietly finished it.

It had long been done, and the afternoon was wearing well on, when Mrs. Landholm came into the kitchen again. Karen had taken care of the children meanwhile. But where was Winthrop? The mother, now quite herself, bethought her of him. Karen knew he was not about the house. But Mrs. Landholm saw that one of the big barn doors was open, and crossed over to it. A small field lay between that and the house. The great barn floor was quite empty, as she entered, except of hay and grain, with which the sides were tightly filled up to the top; the ends were neatly dressed off; the floor left clean and bare. It oddly and strongly struck her, as she saw it, the thought of the hands that had lately been so busy there; the work left, the hands gone; and for a few moments she stood absolutely still, feeling and putting away the idea that made her heart ache. She had a battle to fight before she was mistress of herself and could speak Winthrop's name. Nobody answered; and scolding herself for the tone of her voice, Mrs. Landholm spoke again. A little rustling let her know that she was heard; and presently Winthrop made his appearance from below or from some distant corner behind the hay, and came to meet her. He could not command his face to his mother's eyes, and sorrow for Will for a moment was half forgotten in sorrow for him. As they met she put both hands upon his shoulders, and said wistfully, "My son?" -- But that little word silenced them both. It was only to throw their arms about each other and hide their faces in each other's neck, and cry strange tears; tears that are drawn from the heart's deepest well. Slight griefs flow over the surface, with fury perhaps; but the purest and the sweetest waters are drawn silently.

Winthrop was the first to recover himself, and was kissing his mother with manly quietness before she could raise her head at all. When she did, it was to return his kisses, first on one cheek and then on the other and then on his forehead, parting the hair from it with both hands for the purpose. It seemed as if she would have spoken, but she did not, then, not in words.

"My boy," she said at last, "you have too hard measure laid on you!"

"No, mother -- I don't think it so; -- there is nothing to make me sorry in that."

"Will has got his wish," she observed presently.

"Don't you approve of it mother?"

"Yes --" she said, but as if there were many a thought before and behind.

"Don't you approve of it, mother?" Winthrop asked quickly.

"Yes, yes -- I do, -- in itself; but you know there is one wish before all others in my mind, for him and for you, Winthrop."

He said nothing.

"Come," she said a moment after more cheerfully, "we must go in and see how cosy and sociable we can make ourselves alone. We must practise," -- for next winter, she was going to say, but something warned her to stop. Winthrop turned away his face, though he answered manfully.

"Yes mother -- I must just go over to the bank field and see what Sam Doolittle has been at; and I've got to cut some wood; then I'll be in."

"Will you be back by sundown?"

"I'll not be long after."

The mother gave a look towards the sun, already very near the high western horizon, and another after Winthrop who was moving off at a good pace; and then slowly walked back to the house, one hand clasping its fellow in significant expression.

Karen was sitting in her clean kitchen with little Winifred on her knees, and singing to her in a very sweet Methodist tune,

"There fairer flowers than Eden's bloom, Nor sin nor sorrow know. Blest seats! -- through rude and stormy seas, I onward press to you."

The mother stooped to take up the child.

"What put that into your head, Karen?"

"Everything puts it in my head, missus," said the old woman with a smiling look at her; "sometimes when I see the sun go down, I think by'm-by I won't see him get up again; and times when I lose something, I think by'm-by I won't want it; and sometimes when somebody goes away, I think by'm-by we'll be all gone, and then we'll be all together again; only I'd like sometimes to be all together without going first."

"Will you get down, Winnie?" said her mother, "and let mamma make a cake for brother Winthrop?"

"A cake? -- for Governor?"

"Yes; get down, and I'll make one of Governor's hoe-cakes."

The spirit of love and cheerfulness had got the upper hand when the little family party gathered again; at least that spirit had rule of all that either eyes or ears could take note of. They gathered in the 'keeping-room,' as it was called; the room used as a common sitting room by the family, though it served also the purpose of a sleeping chamber, and a bed accordingly in one corner formed part of the furniture. Their eyes were accustomed to that. It did not hurt the general effect of comfort. There the supper-table was set this evening; the paper window-curtains were let down, and a blazing fire sparkled and crackled; while before it, on the approved oaken barrel-head set up against the andirons, the delicate rye and indian hoe-cake was toasting into sweetness and brownness. Asahel keeping watch on one side of the fire, and Winifred at the other burning her little fair cheek in premature endeavours to see whether the cake was ready to be turned.

"What's going on here!" said Winthrop, catching her up in his arms as he came in.

Winifred laughed and kissed him, and then with an earnest slap of her little hand on his cheek requested to be set down, that she might see, "if that side wasn't done."

"Yes, to be sure it's done," said Asahel. "Where's mamma to turn it?"

"Here," said Winthrop, taking up the barrel cover, -- "do you think nobody can turn a cake but mamma?"

"You can't," said Asahel, -- "you'll let it fall in the ashes, -- you will! --"

But the slice of half baked dough was cleverly and neatly slipped off the board and happily put in its place again with the right side out; and little Winifred, who had watched the operation anxiously, said with a breath of satisfaction and in her slow utterance,

"There -- Governor can do anything!"

There were several cakes to take the benefit of the fire, one after the other, and then to be split and buttered, and then to be eaten; and cakes of Winthrop's baking and mamma's buttering, the children pronounced "as good as could be." Nothing could have better broken up the gloom of their little tea party than Winthrop's hoe-cakes; and then the tea was so good, for nobody had eaten much dinner.

The children were in excellent spirits, and Winthrop kept them in play; and the conversation went on between the three for a large part of the evening. When the little ones were gone to bed, then indeed it flagged; Winthrop and his mother sat awhile silently musing, and then the former bade her good night.

It was long before Mrs. Landholm thought of going to bed, or thought of anything around her; the fire was dead and her candle burnt out, when at length she roused herself. The cold wind made itself felt through many a crevice in the wooden frame house; and feeling too much of its work upon her, she went into the kitchen to see if there were not some warmth still lingering about the covered-up fire. To her surprise, the fire was not covered up; a glow came from it yet; and Winthrop sat there on the hearth, with his head leaning against the jamb and his eyes intently studying the coals. He started, and jumped up.

"Winthrop! --what are you here for, my dear?"

"I came out to warm myself."

"Haven't you been to bed?"

"No ma'am."

"Where have you been?"

"Only in my room, mother."

"Doing what, my son?"

"Thinking --" he said a little unwillingly.

"Sit down and warm yourself," said his mother placing his chair again; -- "Why, your hands are warm now?"

"Yes ma'am -- I have been here a good while."

He sat down, where she had put his chair in front of the fireplace; and she stood warming herself before it, and looking at him. His face was in its usual calmness, and she thought as she looked it was an excellent face. Great strength of character -- great truth -- beneath the broad brow high intellectual capacity, and about the mouth a certain sweet self-possession; to the ordinary observer more cool than sweet, but his mother knew the sweetness.

"What are you thinking about, Winthrop?" she said softly, bending down near enough to lay a loving hand on his brow.

He looked up quickly and smiled, one of those smiles which his mother saw oftener than anybody, but she not often, -- a smile very revealing in its character, -- and said,

"Don't ask me, mamma."

"Who should ask you, if not I?"

"There is no need to trouble you with it, mother."

"You can't help that -- it will trouble me now, whether I know it or not; for I see it is something that troubles you."

"You have too good eyes, mother," he said smiling again, but a different smile.

"My ears are just as good."

"Mamma, I don't want to displease you," he said looking up.

"You can't do that -- you never did yet, Winthrop, my boy," she answered, bending down again and this time her lips to his forehead. "Speak -- I am not afraid."

He was silent a moment, and then mastering himself as it were with some difficulty, he said,

"Mamma, I want to be somebody!"

The colour flushed back and forth on his face, once and again, but beyond that, every feature kept its usual calm.

A shadow fell on his mother's face, and for several minutes she stood and he sat in perfect silence; he not stirring his eyes from the fire, she not moving hers from him. When she spoke, the tone was changed, and though quiet he felt the trouble in it.

"What sort of a somebody, Winthrop?"

"Mamma," he said, "I can't live here! I want to know more and to be more than I can here. I can, I am sure, if I only can find a way; and I am sure I can find a way. It is in me, and it will come out. I don't want anybody to give me any help, nor to think of me; I can work my own way, if you'll only let me and not be troubled about me."

He had risen from his chair to speak this. His mother kept her face in the shadow and said quietly,

"What way will you take, Winthrop?"

"I don't know, ma'am, yet; I haven't found out."

"Do you know the difficulties in the way?"

"No, mother."

It was said in the tone not of proud but of humble determination.

"My boy, they are greater than you think for, or than I like to think of at all."

"I dare say, mother."

"I don't see how it is possible for your father to do more than put Will in the way he has chosen."

"I know that, mother," Winthrop replied, with again the calm face but the flushing colour; -- "he said yesterday -- I heard him --"

"What?"

"He said he would try to make a man of Rufus! I must do it for myself, mother. And I will."

His mother hardly doubted it. But she sighed as she looked, and sighed heavily.

"I ought to have made you promise not to be troubled, mamma," he said with a relaxing face.

"I am more careful of my promises than that," she answered. "But, Winthrop, my boy, what do you want to do first?"

"To learn, mamma!" he said, with a singular flash of fire in his usual cool eye. "To get rid of ignorance, and then to get the power that knowledge gives. Rufus said the other day that knowledge is power, and I know he was right. I feel like a man with his hands tied, because I am so ignorant."

"You are hardly a man yet, Winthrop; you are only a boy in years."

"I am almost sixteen, mother, and I haven't taken the first step yet."

What should the first step be? A question in the minds of both; the answer -- a blank.

"How long have you been thinking of this?"

"Since last spring, mother."

"Didn't Will's going put it in your head?"

"That gave me the first thought; but it would have made no difference, mother; it would have come, sooner or later. I know it would, by my feeling ever since."

Mrs. Landholm's eye wandered round the room, the very walls in their humbleness and roughness reminding her anew of the labour and self-denial it had cost to rear them, and then to furnish them, and that was now expended in keeping the inside warm. Every brown beam and little window-sash could witness the story of privation and struggle, if she would let her mind go back to it; the associations were on every hand; neither was the struggle over. She turned her back upon the room, and sitting down in Winthrop's chair bent her look as he had done into the decaying bed of coals.

He was standing in the shadow of the mantelpiece, and looking down in his turn scanned her face and countenance as a little while before she had scanned his. Hers was a fine face, in some of the finest indications. It had not, probably it never had, the extreme physical beauty of her first-born, nor the mark of intellect that was upon the features of the second. But there was the unmistakable writing of calm good sense, a patient and possessed mind, a strong power for the right, whether doing or suffering, a pure spirit; and that nameless beauty, earthly and unearthly, which looks out of the eyes of a mother; a beauty like which there is none. But more; toil's work, and care's, were there, very plain, on the figure and on the face, and on the countenance too; he could not overlook it; work that years had not had time to do, nor sorrow permission. His heart smote him.

"Mamma," he said, "you have left out the hardest difficulty of all. -- How can I go and leave you and papa without me?"

"How can you? My child, I can bear to do without you in this world, if it is to be for your good or happiness. There is only one thing, Winthrop, I cannot bear."

He was silent.

"I could bear anything -- it would make my life a garden of roses -- if I were sure of having you with me in the next world."

"Mamma -- you know I would --"

"I know you would, I believe, give your life to serve me, my boy. But till you love God as well as that, -- you may be my child, but you are not his."

He was silent still; and heaving a sigh, a weary one, that came from very far down in her heart, she turned away again and sat looking towards the fireplace. But not at it, nor at anything else that mortal eyes could see. It was a look that left the things around her, and passing present wants and future contingencies, went beyond, to the issues, and to the secret springs that move them. An earnest and painful look; a look of patient care and meek reliance; so earnest, so intent, so distant in its gaze, that told well it was a path the mind often travelled and often in such wise, and with the self-same burden. Winthrop watched the gentle grave face, so very grave then in its gentleness, until he could not bear it; her cheek was growing pale, and whether with cold or with thinking he did not care to know.

He came forward and gently touched his cheek to the pale one.

"Mamma, do not look so for me!" he whispered.

She pulled him down beside her on the hearth, and nestled her face on his shoulder and wrapped her arms round him. And they strained him close, but he could not speak to her then.

"For whom should I look? or for what do I live? My boy! I would die to know that you loved Christ; -- that my dear Master was yours too!"

The gently-spoken words tied his tongue. He was mute; till she had unloosed her arms from about him and sat with her face in her hands. Then his head sought her shoulder.

"Mamma, I know you are right. I will do anything to please you -- anything that I can," he said with a great force upon himself.

"What can you do, Winthrop?"

He did not answer again, and she looked up and looked into his face.

"Can you take God for your God? and give your heart and your life, -- all the knowledge you will ever get and all the power it will ever give you, -- to be used for him?"

"For him, mamma? --"

"In doing his work -- in doing his pleasure?"

"Mamma -- I am not a Christian," he said hesitatingly and his eye falling.

"And now you know what a Christian is. Till you can do this, you do nothing. Till you are Christ's after this whole-hearted fashion you are not mine as I wish to see you, -- you are not mine for ever, -- my boy -- my dear Winthrop --" she said, again putting her arm round him and bowing her face to his breast.

Did he ever forget the moment her head lay there? the moment when his arms held the dearest earthly thing life ever had for him? It was a quiet moment; she was not crying; no tears had been dropped at all throughout their conversation; and when she raised her face it was to kiss him quietly, -- but twice, on his lips and on his cheek, -- and bid him good night. But his soul was full of one meaning, as he shut his little bedroom door, -- that that face should never be paler or more care-worn for anything of his doing; -- that he would give up anything, he would never go from home, sooner than grieve her heart in a feather's weight; nay, that rather than grieve her, he would become a Christian.

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Chapter IV

A lonely dwelling, where the shore Is shadowed with rocks, and cypresses Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies, And with their shadows the clear depths below. SHELLEY.

The winter was a long one to the separated family. Quietly won through, and busily. The father in the distant legislature; the brother away at his studies; and the two or three lonely people at home; -- each in his place was earnestly and constantly at work. No doubt Mr. Landholm had more time to play than the rest of them, and his business cares did not press quite so heavily; for he wrote home of gay dinings-out, and familiar intercourse with this and that member of the Senate and Assembly, and hospitable houses that were open to him in Vantassel, where he had pleasant friends and pleasant times. But the home cares were upon him even then; he told how he longed for the Session to be over, that he might be with his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel, and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on dressing the flax. And Winthrop, through the long winter, had taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a little calmer, not a whit the less strong.

He filled father's and brother's place -- his mother knew how well. Sam Doolittle knew, for he declared "there wa'n't a stake in the fences that wa'n't looked after, as smart as if the old chap was to hum." The grain was threshed as duly as ever, though a boy of sixteen had to stand in the shoes of a man of forty. Perhaps Sam and Anderese wrought better than their wont, in shame or in admiration. Karen never had so good a woodpile, Mrs. Landholm's meal bags were never better looked after; and little Winifred and Asahel never wanted their rides in the snow, nor had more nuts cracked o' nights; though they had only one tired brother at home instead of two fresh ones. Truth to tell, however, one ride from Winthrop would at any time content them better than two rides from Will. Winthrop never allowed that he was tired, and never seemed so; but his mother and Karen were resolved that tired he must be.

"He had pretty strength to begin with," Karen said; "that was a good thing; and he seemed to keep it up too; he was shootin' over everything."

If Winthrop kept his old plans of self-aggrandizement, it was at the bottom of his heart; he looked and acted nothing but the farmer, all those months. There was a little visit from Rufus too, at mid-winter, which must have wakened the spirit of other things, if it had been at all laid to sleep. But if it waked it kept still. It did not so much as shew itself. Unless indirectly.

"What have you been doing all to-day, Governor?" said his little sister, meeting him with joyful arms as he came in one dark February evening.

"What have you been about all day?" said her brother, taking her up to his shoulder. "Cold isn't it? Have you got some supper for me?"

"No, I hav'n't, --" said the little girl. "Mamma! -- Governor wants his supper!"

"Hush, hush. Governor's not in a hurry."

"Where have you been all day?" she repeated, putting her little hand upon his cold face with a sort of tender consideration.

"In the snow, and out of it."

"What were you doing in the snow?"

"Walking."

"Was it cold?"

"Stinging."

"What was stinging?"

"Why, the cold!"

She laughed a little, and went on stroking his face.

"What were you doing when you wa'n't in the snow?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Tell me!"

"I was scutching flax."

"What is that?"

"Why, don't you know? -- didn't you see me beating flax in the barn the other day? -- beating it upon a board, with a bat? -- that was scutching."

"That day when mamma said, -- mamma said, you were working too hard?"

"I think it is very likely."

"I thought we were done dressing flax?" remarked Asahel.

"We! -- well, I suppose you have, for this season."

"Well, ain't you done dressing flax?"

"No, sir."

"I thought you said the flax was all done, Winthrop?" said his mother.

"My father's is all done, ma'am."

"And yet you have been dressing flax to-day?" said Asahel; while his mother looked.

"Mamma," said Winthrop, "I wish Asahel was a little older. -- He would be a help."

"Who have you been working for?" said the child.

"For myself."

"Where have you been, Winthrop?" said his mother in a lower tone of inquiry.

"I have been over the mountain, mamma, -- to Mr. Upshur's."

"Dressing flax?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you have come over the mountain to-night?"

"Yes, mother."

She stooped in silence to the fire to take up her tea-pot; but Asahel exclaimed,

"It ain't right, mamma, is it, for Winthrop to be dressing flax for anybody else?"

"What's the wrong?" said his brother.

"Is it, mamma?"

But mamma was silent.

"What's the wrong?" repeated Winthrop.

"Because you ought to be doing your own business."

"Never did, if I didn't to-day," Winthrop remarked as he came to the table.

"For shame Asahel!" put in little Winifred with her childish voice; -- "you don't know. Governor always is right."

It was a very cold February, and it was a very bleak walk over the mountain; but Winthrop took it many a time. His mother now and then said when she saw him come in or go out, "Don't overtry yourself, my son! --" but he answered her always with his usual composure, or with one of those deep breaking-up looks which acknowledged only her care -- not the need for it. As Karen said, "he had a pretty strength to begin with;" and it was so well begun that all the exposure and hardship served rather to its development and maturing.

The snow melted from off the hills, and the winter blasts came more fitfully, and were changed for soft south airs between times. There was an end to dressing flax. The spring work was opening; and Winthrop had enough to do without working on his own score. Then Mr. Landholm came home; and the energies of both the one and the other were fully taxed, at the plough and the harrow, in the barnyard and in the forest, where in all the want of Rufus made a great gap. Mrs. Landholm had more reason now to distress herself, and distressed herself accordingly, but it was of no use. Winthrop wrought early and late, and threw himself into the gap with a desperate ardour that meant -- his mother knew what.

They all wrought cheerfully and with good heart, for they were together again; and the missing one was only thought of as a stimulus to exertion, or its reward. Letters came from Rufus, which were read and read, and though not much talked about, secretly served the whole family for dessert at their dinner and for sweetmeats to their tea. Letters which shewed that the father's end was gaining, that the son's purpose was accomplishing; Rufus would be a man! They were not very frequent, for they avoided the post-office to save expense, and came by a chance hand now and then; -- "Favoured by Mr. Upshur," -- or, "By Uncle Absalom." They were written on great uncouth sheets of letter-paper, yellow and coarse; but the handwriting grew bold and firm, and the words and the thoughts were changing faster yet, from the rude and narrow mind of the boy, to the polish and the spread of knowledge. Perhaps the letters might be boyish yet, in another contrast; but the home circle could not see it; and if they could, certainly the change already made was so swift as shewed a great readiness for more. Mr. Landholm said little about these letters; read them sometimes to Mr. Upshur, read them many times to himself; and for his family, his face at those times was comment enough.

"Well! --" he said one day, as he folded up one of the uncouth great sheets and laid it on the table, -- "the man that could write that, was never made to hoe corn -- that's certain."

Winthrop heard it.

At midsummer Rufus came home for a little. He brought news. He had got into the good graces of an uncle, a brother of his father's, who lived at Little River, a town in the interior, forty miles off. This gentleman, himself a farmer extremely well to do in the world, and with a small family, had invited Rufus to come to his house and carry on his studies there. The invitation was pressed, and accepted, as it would be the means of a great saving of outlay; and Rufus came home in the interval to see them all, and refit himself for the winter campaign.

No doubt he was changed and improved, like his letters; and fond eyes said that fond hopes had not been mistaken. If they looked on him once with pride, they did now with a sort of insensible wonder. His whole air was that of a different nature, not at all from affectation, but by the necessity of the case; and as noble and graceful as nature intended him to be, they delightedly confessed that he was. Perhaps by the same necessity, his view of things was altered a little, as their view of him; a little unconscious change, it might be; that nobody quarrelled with except the children; but certain it is that Winifred did not draw up to him, and Asahel stood in great doubt.

"Mamma," said he one day, "I wish Rufus would pull off his fine clothes and help Winthrop."

"Fine clothes, my dear!" said his mother; "I don't think your brother's clothes are very fine; I wish they were finer. Do you call patches fine?"

"But anyhow they are better than Winthrop's?"

"Certainly -- when Winthrop is at his work."

"Well, the other day he said they were too good for him to help Winthrop load the cart; and I think he should pull them off!"

"Did Winthrop ask him?"

"No; but he knew he was going to do it."

"Rufus must take care of his clothes, or he wouldn't be fit to go to Little River, you know."

"Then he ought to take them off," said Asahel.

"He did cut wood with Winthrop all yesterday."

Asahel sat still in the corner, looking uncomfortable.

"Where are they now, mamma?"

"Here they are," said Mrs. Landholm, as Rufus and Winthrop opened the door.

The former met both pair of eyes directed to him, and instantly asked,

"What are you talking of?"

"Asahel don't understand why you are not more of a farmer, when you are in a farmhouse."

"Asahel had better mind his own business," was the somewhat sharp retort; and Rufus pulled a lock of the little boy's hair in a manner to convey a very decided notion of his judgment. Asahel, resenting this handling, or touched by it, slipped off his chair and took himself out of the room.

"He thinks you ought to take off your fine clothes and help Winthrop more than you do," said his mother, going on with a shirt she was ironing.

"Fine clothes!" said the other with a very expressive breath, -- "I shall feel fine when I get that on, mother. Is that mine?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't Karen do that?"

"No," said Mrs. Landholm, as she put down her iron and took a hot one. The tone said, "Yes -- but not well enough."

He stood watching her neat work.

"I am ashamed of myself, mother, when I look at you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't deserve to have you do this for me."

She looked up and gave him one of her grave clear glances, and said,

"Will you deserve it, Will?"

He stood with full eyes and hushed tongue by her table, for the space of five minutes. Then spoke with a change of tone.

"Well, I'm going down to help Winthrop catch some fish for supper; and you sha'n't cook 'em, mamma, nor Karen neither. Karen's cooking is not perfection. By the by, there's one thing more I do want, -- and confoundedly too, -- a pair of boots; -- I really don't know how to do without them."

"Boots?" -- said his mother, in an accent that sounded a little dismayful.

"Yes. -- I can get capital ones at Asphodel -- really stylish ones -- for five dollars; -- boots that would last me handsome a great while; and that's a third less than I should have to give anywhere else, -- for such boots. You see I shall want them at Little River -- I shall be thrown more in the way of seeing people -- there's a great deal of society there. I don't see that I can get along without them."

His mother was going on with her ironing.

"I don't know," she said, as her iron made passes up and down, -- "I don't know whether you can have them or not."

"I know," said Winthrop. "But I don't see the sense of getting them at Asphodel."

"Because I tell you they are two dollars and a half cheaper."

"And how much more will it cost you to go round by the way of Asphodel than to go straight to Little River?"

"I don't know," said the other, half careless, half displeased; -- "I really haven't calculated."

"Well, if you can get them for five dollars," said Winthrop, "you shall have them. I can lend you so much as that."

"How did you come by it?" said his brother looking at him curiously.

"I didn't come by it at all."

"Where did it come from?"

"Made it."

"How?"

"What do you want to know for? I beat it out of some raw flax."

"And carried it over the mountain, through the snow, winter nights," added his mother.

"You didn't know you were doing it for me," Rufus said laughing as he took the money his brother handed him. But it was a laugh assumed to hide some feeling. "Well, it shall get back to you again somehow, Winthrop. Come -- are we ready for this piscatory excursion?"

"For what?" said his mother.

"A Latin word, my dear mother, which I lately picked up somewhere."

"Why not use English?" said his mother.

A general little laugh, to which many an unexpressed thought and feeling went, broke up the conference; and the two fishers set forth on their errand; Rufus carrying the basket and fishing-poles, and Winthrop's shoulder bearing the oars. As they went down in front of the house, little Winifred ran out.

"Governor, mayn't I go?"

"No!" said Rufus.

"We are going to Point Bluff, Winnie," said Winthrop stopping to kiss her, -- "and I am afraid you would roll off on one side while I was pulling up a fish on the other."

She stood still, and looked after her two brothers as they went down to the water.

The house stood in a tiny little valley, a little basin in the rocks, girdled about on all sides with low craggy heights covered with evergreens. On all sides but one. To the south the view opened full upon the river, a sharp angle of which lay there in a nook like a mountain lake; its further course hid behind a headland of the western shore; and only the bend and a little bit before the bend could be seen from the valley. The level spot about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature alone had to do there. Cedars, as soon as the bottom land was cleared, stood the denizens of the soil on every side, lifting their soft heads into the sky. Little else was to be seen. Here and there, a little further off, the lighter green of an oak shewed itself, or the tufts of a yellow pine; but near at hand the cedars held the ground, thick pyramids or cones of green, from the very soil, smooth and tapered as if a shears had been there; but only nature had managed it. They hid all else that they could; but the grey rocks peeped under, and peeped through, and here and there broke their ranks with a huge wall or ledge of granite, where no tree could stand. The cedars had climbed round to the top and went on again above the ledge, more mingled there with deciduous trees, and losing the exceeding beauty of their supremacy in the valley. In the valley it was not unshared; for the Virginia creeper and cat-briar mounted and flung their arms about them, and the wild grape-vines took wild possession; and in the day of their glory they challenged the bystander to admire anything without them. But the day of their glory was not now; it came when Autumn called them to shew themselves; and Autumn's messenger was far off. The cedars had it, and the roses, and the eglantine, under Summer's rule.

It was in the prime of summer when the two fishers went down to their boat. The valley level was but a few feet above the river; on that side, with a more scattering growth of cedars, the rocks and the greensward gently let themselves down to the edge of the water. The little dory was moored between two uprising heads of granite just off the shore. Stepping from rock to rock the brothers reached her. Rufus placed himself in the stern with the fishing tackle, and Winthrop pushed off.

There was not a stir in the air; there was not a ripple on the water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it. Still -- still, -- surely it was Summer's siesta; the very birds were still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer's day. The very air seemed blue -- blue against the mountains, and kept back the sun's fierceness with its light shield; and even the eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under the same blue.

No distant landscape was to be seen, until they had rowed for several minutes. Winthrop had turned to the north and was coasting the promontory edge, which in that direction stretched along for more than a quarter of a mile. It stretched west as well as north, and the river's course beyond it was in a north-easterly line; so that keeping close under the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the point was turned. First they passed the rock-bound shore which fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the river, cut in two by a small belt of woods. These acres were not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the ground there rising fast to a very bluff and precipitous range which ended the promontory, and pushed the river boldly into a curve, as abrupt almost as the one it took in an opposite direction a quarter of a mile below. Here the shore was bold and beautiful. The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall; sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock. It was all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the other shore was unfolding itself. One huge mountain had been all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing, except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with blue, and only the nearer highlands shewed under the mask their fine outlines, and the Shatemuc its smooth face.

At the point of the promontory the rocky wall broke down to a low easy shore, which stretched off easterly in a straight line for half a mile, to the bottom of what was called the north bay. Just beyond the point, a rounded mass of granite pushed itself into the water out of reach of the trees and shewed itself summer and winter barefacedly. This rock was known at certain states of the tide to be in the way of the white mackerel. Winthrop made fast his little skiff between it and the shore, and climbing upon the rock, he and Rufus sat down and fell to work; for to play they had not come hither, but to catch their supper.

The spirit of silence seemed to have possessed them both, for with very few words they left the boat and took their places, and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited and the lines thrown. Profound stillness -- and then the flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching after the bait-basket -- and then all was still again. The lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers wandered off to the distant blue, and then came back to their bobbing corks. Thinking, both the young men undoubtedly were, for it could not have been the mackerel that called such grave contemplation into their faces.

"It's confoundedly hot!" said Rufus at length very expressively.

His brother seemed amused.

"What are you laughing at?" said Rufus a little sharply.

"Nothing -- I was thinking you had been in the shade lately. We've got 'most enough, I guess."

"Shade! -- I wish there was such a thing. This is a pretty place though, if it wasn't August, -- and if one was doing anything but sitting on a rock fishing."

"Isn't it better than Asphodel?" said Winthrop.

"Asphodel! -- When are you going to get away from here, Winthrop?"

"I don't know."

"Has anything been done about it?"

"No."

"It is time, Winthrop."

Winthrop was silent.

"We must manage it somehow. You ought not to be fishing here any longer. I want you to get on the way."

"Ay -- I must wait awhile," said the other with a sigh. "I shall go -- that's all I know, but I can't see a bit ahead. I'm round there under the point now, and there's a big headland in the way that hides the up view."

Again the eyes of the fishers were fixed on their corks, gravely, and in the case of Rufus with a somewhat disturbed look.

"I wish I was clear of the headlands too," said he after a short silence; "and there's one standing right across my way now."

"What's that?"

"Books."

"Books?" said Winthrop.

"Yes -- books which I haven't got."

"Books!" said his brother in astonishment.

"Yes --why?"

"I thought you said boots," the other remarked simply, as he disengaged a fish from the hook.

"Well," said Rufus sharply, "what then? what if I did? Can't a man want to furnish both ends of his house at once?"

"I have heard of a man in his sleep getting himself turned about with his head in the place of his feet. I thought he was dreaming."

"You may have your five dollars again, if you think them ill- bestowed," said the other putting his hand in his pocket; -- "There they are! -- I don't want them -- I will find a way to stand on my own legs -- with boots or without, as the case may be."

"I don't know who has better legs," said Winthrop. "I can't pity you."

"But seriously, Winthrop," said Rufus, smiling in spite of himself, -- "a man may go empty-headed, but he cannot go bare- footed into a library, nor into society."

"Did you go much into society at Asphodel?" asked Winthrop.

"Not near so much as I shall -- and that's the very thing. I can't do without these things, you see. They are necessary to me. Even at Asphodel -- but that was nothing. Asphodel will be a very good place for you to go to in the first instance. You won't find yourself a stranger."

"Will you be ready for college next year?"

"Hum -- don't know -- it depends. I am not anxious about it -- I shall be all the better prepared if I wait longer, and I should like to have you with me. It will make no difference in the end, for I can enter higher, and that will save expense. Seriously Winthrop, you must get away."

"I must catch that fish," said Winthrop, -- "if I can --"

"You won't --"

"I've got him."

"There's one place at Asphodel where I've been a good deal -- Mr. Haye's -- he's an old friend of my father's and thinks a world of him. You'll like him -- he's been very kind to me."

"What shall I like him for -- besides that?" said Winthrop.

"O he's a man of great wealth, and has a beautiful place there, and keeps a very fine house, and he's very hospitable. He's always very glad to see me; and it's rather a pleasant change from Glanbally's vis-à-vis and underdone apple-pies. He is one of the rich, rich Mannahatta merchants, but he has a taste for better things too. Father knows him -- they met some years ago in the Legislature, and father has done him some service or other since. He has no family -- except one or two children not grown up -- his wife is dead -- so I suppose he was glad of somebody to help him eat his fine dinners. He said some very handsome things to encourage me. He might have offered me the use of his library -- but he did not."

"Perhaps he hasn't one."

"Yes he has -- a good one."

"It's got into the wrong hands, I'm afraid," said Winthrop.

"He has a little the character of being hard-fisted. At least I think so. He has a rich ward that he is bringing up with his daughter, -- a niece of his wife's -- and people say he will take his commission out of her property; and there is nobody to look after it."

"Well I shan't take the office," said Winthrop, getting up. "If the thought of Mr. Haye's fine dinner hasn't taken away your appetite, suppose we get home and see how these mackerel will look fried."

"It's just getting pleasant now," said Rufus as he rose to his feet. "There might be a worse office to take, for she will have a pretty penny, they say."

"Do you think of it yourself?"

"There's two of them," said Rufus smiling.

"Well, you take one and I'll take the other," said Winthrop. gravely. "That's settled. And here is something you had better put in your pocket as we go -- it may be useful in the meanwhile."

He quietly gathered up the five dollars from the rock and slipped them into the pocket of Rufus's jacket as he spoke; then slipped himself off the rock, took the fishing tackle and baskets into the boat, and then his brother, and pushed out into the tide. There was a strong ebb, and they ran swiftly down past rock and mountain and valley, all in a cooler and fairer beauty than a few hours before when they had gone up. Rufus took off his hat and declared there was no place like home; and Winthrop sometimes pulled a few strong strokes and then rested on his oars and let the boat drop down with the tide.

"Winthrop," -- said Rufus, as he sat paddling his hands in the water over the side of the boat, -- "you're a tremendous fine fellow!"

"Thank you. -- I wish you'd sit a little more in the middle."

"This is better than Asphodel just now," Rufus remarked as he took his hands out and straightened himself.

"How do you like Mr. Glanbally?"

"Well enough -- he's a very good man -- not too bright; but he's a very good man. He does very well. I must get you there, Winthrop."

Winthrop shook his head and turned the conversation; and Rufus in fact went away from home without finding a due opportunity to speak on the matter. But perhaps other agency was at work.

The summer was passed, and the fall nearly; swallowed up in farm duty as the months before had been. The cornstalks were harvested and part of the grain threshed out. November was on its way.

"Governor," said his father one night, when Winthrop was playing "even or odd" with Winifred and Asahel, a great handful of chestnuts being the game, -- "Governor, have you a mind to take Rufus's place at Asphodel for a while this fall?"

The blood rushed to Winthrop's face; but he only forgot his chestnuts and said, "Yes, sir."

"You may go, if you've a mind to, and as soon as you like. -- It's better travelling now than it will be by and by. I can get along without you for a spell, I guess."

"Thank you, father."

But Winthrop's eyes sought his mother's face. In vain little Winifred hammered upon his hand with her little doubled up fist, and repeated, "even or odd?" He threw down the chestnuts and quitted the room hastily.

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Chapter V

The wind blew hollow frae the hills, By fits the sun's departing beam Looked on the fading yellow woods That waved o'er Lugar's winding stream. BURNS.

He five dollars were gone. No matter -- they could be wanted. They must be. Winthrop had no books either. What had he? A wardrobe large enough to be tied up in a pocket-handkerchief; his father's smile; his mother's tremulous blessing; and the tears of his little brother and sister.

He set out with his wardrobe in his hand, and a dollar in his pocket, to walk to Asphodel. It was a walk of thirteen miles. The afternoon was chill, misty and lowering; November's sad- colour in the sky, and Winter's desolating heralds all over the ground. If the sun shone anywhere, there was no sign of it; and there was no sign of it either in the traveller's heart. If fortune had asked him to play "even or odd," he could hardly have answered her.

He was leaving home. They did not know it, but he did. It was the first step over home's threshold. This little walk was the beginning of a long race, of which as yet he knew only the starting-point; and for love of that starting-point and for straitness of heart at turning his back upon it, he could have sat down under the fence and cried. How long this absence from home might be, he did not know. But it was the snapping of the tie, -- that he knew. He was setting his face to the world; and the world's face did not answer him very cheerfully. And that poor little pocket-handkerchief of things, which his mother's hands had tied up, he hardly dared glance at it; it said so pitifully how much they would, how little they had the power to do for him; she and his father; how little way that heart of love could reach, when once he had set out on the cold journey of life. He had set out now, and he felt alone, -- alone; -- his best company was the remembrance of that whispered blessing; and that, he knew, would abide with him. If the heart could have coined the treasure it sent back, his mother would have been poor no more.

He did not sit down, nor stop, nor shed a tear. It would have gone hard with him if he had been obliged to speak to anybody; but there was nobody to speak to. Few were abroad, at that late season and unlovely time. Comfort had probably retreated to the barns and farmhouses -- to the homesteads, -- for it was a desolate road that he travelled; the very wagons and horses that he met were going home, or would be. It was a long road, and mile after mile was plodded over, and evening began to say there was nothing so dark it might not be darker. No Asphodel yet.

It was by the lights that he saw it at length and guessed he was near the end of his journey. It took some plodding then to reach it. Then a few inquiries brought him where he might see Mr. Glanbally.

It was a corner house, flush upon the road, bare as a poverty of boards could make it, and brown with the weather. In the twilight he could see that. Winthrop thought nothing of it; he was used to it; his own house at home was brown and bare; but alas! this looked very little like his own house at home. There wasn't penthouse enough to keep the rain from the knocker. He knocked.

"Is Mr. Glanbally at home?"

"Yes -- I 'spect he is -- he come in from school half an hour ago. You go in there, and I guess you'll find him."

'There,' indicated a door at right angles with the front and about a yard behind it. The woman opened the door, and left Winthrop to shut it for himself.

In a bare room, at a bare table, by an ill-to-do dip candle, sat Mr. Glanbally and his book. The book on the table, and Mr. Glanbally's face on the book, as near as possible; and both as near as possible under the candle. Reason enough for that, when the very blaze of a candle looked so little like giving light. Was that why Mr. Glanbally's eyes almost touched the letters? Winthrop wondered he could see them at all; but probably he did, for he did not look up to see anything else. He had taken the opening and shutting of the door to be by some wonted hand. Winthrop stood still a minute. There was nothing remarkable about his future preceptor, except his position. He was a little, oldish man -- that was all.

Winthrop moved a step or two, and then looking hastily up, the little man pushed the candle one way and the book another, and peered at his visitor.

"Ah! -- Do you wish to see me, sir?"

"I wish to see Mr. Glanbally."

"That's my name, sir, -- that's right."

Winthrop came a step nearer and laid a letter on the table. The old gentleman took it up, examined the outside, and then went on to scan what was within, holding the lines in the same fearful proximity to his face; so near indeed, that to Winthrop's astonishment when he got to the bottom of the page he made no scruple of turning over the leaf with his nose. The letter was folded, and then Mr. Glanbally rose to his feet.

"Well, sir, and so you have come to take a place in our Academy for a spell -- I am glad to see you -- sit down."

Which Winthrop did; and Mr. Glanbally sat looking at him, a little business-like, a little curious, a little benevolent.

"What have you studied?"

"Very little, sir, -- of anything."

"Your father says, his second son -- What was the name of the other?"

"William, sir."

"William what?"

"Landholm."

"William Landholm -- yes, I recollect -- I couldn't make out exactly whether it was Sandball or Lardner -- Mr. Landholm -- Where is your brother now, sir?"

"He is at Little River, sir, going on with his studies."

"He made very good progress -- very good indeed -- he's a young man of talent, your brother. He's a smart fellow. He's going on to fit himself to enter college, ain't he?"

"Yes sir."

"He'll do well -- he can do what he's a mind. Well, Mr. Landholm -- what are you going to turn your hand to?"

"I have hardly determined, sir, yet."

"You'll see your brother -- something, I don't know what, one of these days, and you'll always be his brother, you know. Now what are you going to make of yourself? -- merchant or farmer?"

"Neither, sir."

"No?" -- said Mr. Glanbally. He looked a little surprised, for Mr. Landholm's letter had spoken of "a few weeks."

"Well, what then?"

"I don't know what I shall like best, sir," said Winthrop.

"No, not yet; perhaps not yet. You'll be a happy man if ever you do, sir. I never knew what I liked best, till I couldn't have it. Well sir -- what do you calculate to begin upon? -- a little arithmetic, I suppose, won't be out of the way."

"I should like -- Latin, if you please, sir."

"Latin! Then you're following your brother's steps? I am glad of it! It does me good to see boys studying Latin. That's right. Latin. And Algebra, perhaps."

"Yes sir."

"I'll put you into Algebra, as soon as you like."

"I shall want books, I suppose, sir. Can I get them here?"

"No; you can't get 'em, I'm afraid, this side of Deerford."

"Deerford?"

"That's six miles off, or so."

"I can't walk there to-night," said Winthrop; "but I'll go to- morrow."

"Walk there to-night! no, -- but we'll see. I think you've got the stuff in you. To-night! -- Maybe we can find some old books that will do to begin with; and you can walk over there some waste afternoon. How far have you come to-day?"

"About thirteen miles, sir, from home."

"On foot?"

"Yes sir."

"And you want half a dozen more to-night?"

"No sir," said Winthrop, smiling, -- "not if I might choose."

"You'll find a day. Your father spoke to me about your lodgings. You can lodge here, where I do; only twelve shillings a week. I'll speak to Mrs. Nelson about it; and you can just make yourself at home. I'm very glad to see you."

'Make himself at home'! Winthrop's heart gave an emphatic answer, as he drew up a chair the opposite side of the fireplace. Make himself at home. That might only be done by a swift transport of thirteen miles. He could not do it, if he would. Would he, if he could? Nay, he had set his face up the mountain of learning, and not all the luring voices that might sound behind and beside him could tempt him to turn back. He must have the Golden Water that was at the top.

It was necessary to stuff cotton into his ears. Fancy had obstinately a mind to bring his mother's gentle tread about him, and to ring the sweet tones of home, and to shew him pictures of the summer light on the hills, and of the little snow-spread valley of winter. Nay, by the side of that cold fireplace, with Mr. Glanbally at one corner and himself at the other, she set the bright hearth of home, girdled with warm hearts and hands; a sad break in them now for his being away. Mr. Glanbally had returned to his book and was turning over the leaves of it with his nose; and Winthrop was left alone to his contemplations. How alone the turning over of those leaves did make him feel. If Mr. Glanbally would have held up his head and used his fingers, like a Christian man, it would not have been so dreary; but that nose said emphatically, "You never saw me before."

It was a help to him when somebody came in to spread that bare table with supper. Fried pork, and cheese; and bread that was not his mother's sweet baking, and tea that was very "herbaceous." It was the fare he must expect up the mountain. He did not mind that. He would have lived on bread and water. The company were not fellow-travellers either, to judge by their looks. No matter for that; he did not want company. He would sing, "My mind to me a kingdom is;" but the kingdom had to be conquered first; enough to do. He was thinking all supper-time what waste ground it was. And after supper he was taken to his very spare room. It was doubtful how the epithet could possibly have been better deserved. That mattered not; the temple of Learning should cover his head by and by; it signified little what shelter it took in the mean while. But though he cared nothing for each of these things separately, they all together told him he was a traveller; and Winthrop's heart owned itself overcome, whatever his head said to it.

His was not a head to be ashamed of his heart; and it was with no self-reproach that he let tears come, and then wiped them away. He slept at last; and the sleep of a tired man should be sweet. But "as he slept he dreamed." He fell to his journeyings again. He thought himself back on the wearisome road he had come that day, and it seemed that night and darkness overtook him; such night that his way was lost. And he was sitting by the roadside, with his little bundle, stayed that he could not go on, when his mother suddenly came, with a light, and offered to lead him forward. But the way by which she would lead him was not one he had ever travelled, for the dream ended there. He awoke and knew it was a dream; yet somewhat in the sweet image, or in the thoughts and associations it brought back, touched him strangely; and he wept upon his pillow with the convulsive weeping of a little child. And prayed, that night, for the first time in his life, that in the journey before him his mother's God might be his God. He slept at last.

He awoke to new thoughts and to fresh exertion. Action, action, was the business of the day; to get up the hill of learning, the present aim of life; and to that he bent himself. Whether or not Winthrop fancied this opportunity might be a short one, it is certain he made the most of it. Mr. Glanbally had for once his heart's desire of a pupil.

It was a week or two before the walk was taken to Deerford and the books bought. At the end of those weeks the waste afternoon fell out, and Mr. Glanbally got Winthrop a ride in a wagon for one half the way. Deerford was quite a place; but to Winthrop its great attraction was -- a Latin dictionary! He found the right bookstore, and his dollar was duly exchanged for a second-hand Virgil, a good deal worn, and a dictionary, which had likewise seen its best days; and that was not saying much; for it was of very bad paper and in most miserable little type. But it was a precious treasure to Winthrop. His heart yearned after some Greek books, but his hand was stayed; there was nothing more in it. He had only got the Virgil and dictionary by favour eking out his eight shillings, for the books were declared to be worth ten. So he trudged off home again with his purchases under his arm, well content. That Virgil and dictionary were a guide of the way for a good piece of the mountain. Now to get up it.

He had got home and was turning the books over with Mr. Glanbally, just in the edge of the evening, when the door opened quick and a little female figure came in. She came close up to the table with the air of one quite at home.

"Good evening, Mr. Glanbally -- father told me to give you this letter."

Winthrop looked at her, and Mr. Glanbally looked at the letter. She was a slight little figure, a child, not more than thirteen or fourteen at the outside, perhaps not so much, but tall of her age. A face not like those of the Asphodel children. She did not once look towards him.

"Why I thought you were in Mannahatta, Miss Elizabeth."

"Just going there -- we have just come from Little River on our way."

"This letter is for you, Winthrop," said Mr. Glanbally, handing it over. "And Mr. Haye was kind enough to bring it from Little River?"

"Yes sir -- he said it was for somebody here."

"And now you are going to Mannahatta?"

"Yes sir -- to-morrow. Good bye, Mr. Glanbally."

"Are you alone, Miss Elizabeth?"

"Yes sir."

"Where is Miss Cadwallader?"

"She's at home. I've just been down to see nurse."

"But it's too late for you," said Mr. Glanbally, getting up, -- "it's too dark -- it's too late for you to go home alone."

"O no sir, I'm not afraid."

"Stop, I'll go with you," said Mr. Glanbally, -- "but I've been riding till I'm as stiff as the tongs -- Winthrop, are you too tired to walk home with this young lady? -- as her father has brought you a letter you might do so much."

"Certainly, sir, -- I am not tired."

"I don't want anybody. I'm not in the least afraid, Mr. Glanbally," said the little lady rather impatiently, and still not glancing at her promised escort.

"But it's better, Miss Elizabeth" --

"No sir, it isn't."

"Your father will like it better, I know. This is Mr. Landholm -- the brother of the Mr. Landholm you used to see last summer, -- you remember."

Elizabeth looked at her guard, as if she had no mind to remember anybody of the name, and without more ado left the room. Winthrop understanding that he was to follow, did so, and with some difficulty brought himself up alongside of the little lady, for she had not tarried for him and was moving on at a smart pace. Her way led them presently out of the village and along a lonely country road. Winthrop thought he was not a needless convenience at that hour; but it was doubtful what his little charge thought. She took no manner of notice of him. Winthrop thought he would try to bring her out, for he was playing the part of a shadow too literally.

"You are a good walker, Miss Elizabeth."

A slight glance at him, and no answer.

"Do you often go out alone so late?"

"Whenever I want to."

"How do you like living in the city?"

"I? -- I don't know. I have never lived there."

"Have you lived here?"

"Yes."

The tone was perfectly self-possessed and equally dry. He tried her again.

"My brother says you have a very pleasant place."

There was no answer at all this time. Winthrop gave it up as a bad business.

It had grown nearly dark. She hurried on, as much as was consistent with a pace perfectly steady. About half a mile from the village she came to a full stop, and looked towards him, almost for the first time.

"You can leave me now. I can see the light in the windows."

"Not yet," said Winthrop smiling -- "Mr. Glanbally would hardly think I had done my duty."

"Mr. Glanbally needn't trouble himself about me! He has nothing to do with it. This is far enough."

"I must go a little further."

She started forward again, and a moment after hardly made her own words good. They encountered a large drove of cattle, that spread all over the road. Little independence plainly faltered here and was glad to walk behind her guard, till they had passed quite through. They came then to the iron gate of her grounds.

"You needn't come any further," she said. "Thank you."

And as she spoke she opened and shut the gate in his face. Winthrop turned about and retraced his steps homeward, to read his brother's letter. It was read by his little end of candle after he went up to bed at night.

"Little River, Nov. 1807.

"My dear governor,

"For I expect you will be all that, one of these days, (a literal "governor," I mean,) or in some other way assert your supremacy over nineteen twentieths of the rest of the human race. Methinks even now from afar I see Joseph's dream enacting, in your favour, only you will perforce lack something of his baker's dozen of homages in your own family. Unless -- but nobody can tell what may happen. For my part I am sincerely willing to be surpassed, so it be only by you; and will swing my cap and hurrah for you louder than anybody, the first time you are elected. Do not think I am more than half mad. In truth I expect great things from you, and I expect without any fear of disappointment. You have an obstinacy of perseverance, under that calm face of yours, that will be more than a match for all obstacles in your way; indeed obstacles only make the rush of the stream the greater, if once it get by them; the very things which this minute threatened to check it, the next are but trophies in the foaming triumph of its onward course. You can do what you will; and you will aim high. Aim at the highest.

"I am aiming as hard as I can, and so fast that I can't see whether my arrows hit. Not at the capture of any pretty face, -- though there are a few here that would be prizes worth capturing; but really I am not skilled in that kind of archery and on the whole am not quite ready for it. An archer needs to be better equipped, to enter those lists with any chance of success, than alas! I am at present. I am aiming hard at the dressing up of my mind, in the sincere hope that the dressing up of my person may have some place in the after-piece. In other words, I am so busy that I don't know what I am doing. Asphodel was a miserable place (though I am very glad you are in it) -- my chances of success at Little River are much better. Indeed I am very much to my mind here; were I, as I said, a little better equipped outwardly, and if my aunt Landholm only had mamma's recipe for making pumpkin pies; or, as an alternative, had the pumpkin crop this season but failed. But alas! the huge number of the copper-coloured tribe that lurked among the corn forests a few weeks ago, forbid me to hope for any respite till St. Nicholas jogs my aunt L.'s elbow.

"I have left myself no room to say with how much delight I received your letter, nor with what satisfaction I think of you as having fairly started in the race. You have entered your plough, now, Governor, -- quick, quick, for the other side.

"Thine in the dearest rivalry,

"Will. Rufus Landholm

"All manner of love to mamma, papa, and the little ones, from Will."

In another corner, -- "I am sorry Mr. Haye makes so little stay at Asphodel at this time -- you will not see anything of him, nor of his place."

"I can bear that," thought Winthrop.

He was much too busy to see men or places. One fortnight was given to the diligent study of Algebra; two other little fortnights to Latin; and then his father came and took him home, sooner than he expected. But he had "entered his plough."

Yet it was hard to leave it there just entered; and the ride home was rather a thoughtful one. Little his father knew what he had been about. He thought his son had been "getting a little schooling;" he had no notion he had begun to fit himself for College!

Just as they reached the river, at a little hamlet under the hill at the foot of the north bay, where the road branched off to skirt the face of the tableland towards the home promontory, the wagon was stopped by Mr. Underhill. He came forward and unceremoniously rested both arms upon the tire of the fore wheel.

"Mornin'. Where' you been?"

"A little way back. 'Been to Asphodel, to fetch my son Winthrop home."

"Asphodel? -- that's a good way back, ain't it?"

"Well, a dozen miles or so," said Mr. Landholm laughing.

"Has he been to the 'cademy too?"

"Yes -- for a little while back, he has."

"What are you going to make of your sons, neighbour Landholm?"

"Ah! -- I don't know," said Mr. Landholm, touching his whip gently first on one side and then on the other side of his off horse; -- "I can't make much of 'em -- they've got to make themselves."

Neighbour Underhill gave a sharp glance at Winthrop and then came back again.

"What do you reckon's the use of all this edication, farmer?"

"O -- I guess it has its uses," said Mr. Landholm, smiling a little bit.

"Well, do you s'pose these boys are goin' to be smarter men than you and I be?"

"I hope so."

"You do! Well, drive on! --" said he, taking his arms from the top of the wheel. But then replacing them before the wagon had time to move --

"Where's Will?"

"Will? he's at Little River --doing well, as I hear."

"Doing what? getting himself ready for College yet?"

"Yes -- he isn't ready yet."

"I say, neighbour, -- it takes a power of time to get these fellows ready to begin, don't it?"

"Yes," said Mr. Landholm with a sigh.

"After they're gone you calculate to do all the work yourself, I s'pose?"

"O I've only lost one yet," said Mr. Landholm shaking the reins; "and he'll help take care of me by and by, I expect. -- Come!"

Again the other's hands slipped off the wheel, and again were put back.

"We're goin' to do without larnin' here," said he. "Lost our schoolmaster."

"That fellow Dolts gone?"

"Last week."

"What's the matter?"

"The place and him didn't fit somewheres, I s'pose; at least I don't know what 'twas if 'twa'n't that."

"What are you going to do?"

"Play marbles, I guess, -- till some one comes along."

"Well, my hands 'll be too cold to play marbles, if I sit here much longer," said Mr. Landholm laughing. "Good day to ye!"

And the wheel unclogged, they drove on.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter VI

To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Little could be done in the winter. The days were short and full of employment; all the more for Will's absence. What with threshing wheat and oats, foddering cattle, and dressing flax, driving to mill, cutting wood, and clearing snow, there was no time for Virgil during the few hours of daylight; hardly time to repeat a Latin verb. The evenings were long and bright, and the kitchen cosy. But there were axe-helves to dress out, and oars, and ox-yokes; and corn to shell, and hemp to hackle; and at which ever corner of the fireplace Winthrop might set himself down, a pair of little feet would come pattering round him, and petitions, soft but strong, to cut an apple, or to play jackstraws, or to crack hickory nuts, or to roast chestnuts, were sure to be preferred; and if none of these, or if these were put off, there was still too much of that sweet companionship to suit with the rough road to learning. Winnie was rarely put off, and never rejected. And the little garret room used by Winthrop and Will when the latter was at home, and now by Winthrop alone, was too freezing cold when he went up to bed to allow him more than a snatch at his longed-for work. A few words, a line or two, were all that could be managed with safety to life; and the books had to be shut up again, with bitter mortification that it must be so soon. The winter passed and Virgil was not read. The spring brought longer days, and more to do in them.

"Father," said Winthrop one night, "they have got no one yet in Mr. Dolts' place."

"What, at Mountain Spring? I know they haven't. The foolish man thought twelve dollars a month wa'n't enough for him, I suppose."

"Why was he foolish, Mr. Landholm?"

"Because he greatly misstated his own value -- which it isn't the part of a wise man to do. I know he wasn't worth twelve dollars."

"Do you think I am worth more than that, sir?"

"I don't know what you're worth," said his father good- humouredly. "I should be sorry to put a price upon you."

"Why, Winthrop?" -- his mother said more anxiously.

"Will you let me take Mr. Dolts' place, father?"

"His place? What, in the schoolhouse?"

"Yes, sir. If I can get it, I mean."

"What for?"

"The twelve dollars a month would hire a man to do my work on the farm."

"Yes, and I say, what for? What do you want it for?"

"I think perhaps I might get more time to myself."

"Time? -- for what?"

"Time to study, sir."

"To study! -- Teach others that you may teach yourself, eh?" said Mr. Landholm, with a breath that was drawn very much like a sigh; and he was silent and looked grave.

"I am afraid you wouldn't like it, Winthrop," said his mother seriously.

"I should like the time, mamma."

"I wish I were a little richer," said Mr. Landholm, drawing his breath, -- "and my sons should have a better chance. I am willing to work both my hands off -- if that would be of any avail. You may do as you please, my dear, about the school. I'll not stand in your way."

"The twelve dollars would pay a man who would do as much work as I could, father."

"Yes, yes, -- that's all straight enough."

"Is Winthrop going to teach school?" exclaimed Asahel.

"Perhaps so."

"Then I should go to school to Winthrop," said the little boy clapping his hands, -- "shouldn't I, mamma? Wouldn't it be funny?"

"I too?" cried Winifred.

"Hush, hush. Hear what your father says."

"I am only sorry you should have to resort to such expedients."

"Do you think they would take me, father?"

"Take you? yes! If they don't, I'll make them."

"Thank you, sir."

Winthrop presently went with the children, who drew him out into the kitchen. Mr. Landholm sat a few moments in silent and seemingly disturbed thought.

"That boy'll be off to College too," he said, -- "after his brother."

"He'll not be likely to go after anything wrong," said Mrs. Landholm.

"No --that's pretty certain. Well, I'll do all I can for him!"

"Whatever he undertakes I think he'll succeed in," the mother went on remarking.

"I think so too. He always did, from a child. It's his character. There's a sharp edge to Rufus's metal, -- but I think Winthrop's is the best stuff. Well I ain't ashamed of either one on 'em!"

Winthrop took the school. He found it numbering some thirty heads or more. That is, it would count so many, though in some instances the heads were merely nominal. There were all sorts, from boys of fifteen and sixteen that wanted to learn the Multiplication table, down to little bits of girls that did not know A, B, and C. Rough heads, with thoughts as matted as their hair; lank heads, that reminded one irresistibly of blocks; and one fiery red shock, all of whose ideas seemed to be standing on end and ready to fly away, so little hold had they upon either knowledge, wit, or experience. And every one of these wanted different handling, and every one called for diligent study and patient painstaking. There were often fine parts to be found under that rough and untrained state of nature; there were blocks that could be waked into life by a little skill and kind management and a good deal of time; and even the fly-away shock could be brought down to order and reason by a long course of patience and firmness. But the younger heads that had no thoughts at all, -- the minds that were blank of intelligence, -- the eyes that opened but to stare at the new teacher! What amount of culture, what distance of days and months, would bring something out of nothing!

It was hard, hard work. There was nobody to help the new teacher; he wrought alone; that the teacher always did. The days were days of constant, unintermitted labour; the nights were jaded and spiritless. After spelling a great deal in the course of the day, and making up an indefinite number of sums in addition and multiplication, Winthrop found his stomach was gone for Latin and Virgil. Ears and eyes and mind were sick of the din of repetitions, wearied with confusions of thought not his own; he was fain to let his own rest. The children "got on," the parents said, "first-rate;" but the poor teacher was standing still. Week passed after week, and each Saturday night found him where he was the last. He had less time than on the farm. Fresh from the plough, he could now and then snatch a half hour of study to some purpose; there was no "fresh from the school." Besides all which, he still found himself or fancied himself needed by his father, and whenever a pinch of work called for it he could not hold back his hand.

"How does it go, Winthrop?" said his mother when she saw him wearily sitting down one summer night.

"It doesn't go at all, mother."

"I was afraid that it would be so."

"How does what go?" said Asahel.

"The school."

"How does it go?"

"Upon my head; and I am tired of carrying it."

"Don't you like being school-teacher?"

"No."

"I do," said Asahel.

"I wouldn't stay in it, Winthrop," said his mother.

"I will not mamma, -- only till winter. I'll manage it so long."

Eight months this experiment was tried, and then Winthrop came back to the farm. Eight months thrown away! he sadly said to himself. He was doubly needed at home now, for Mr. Landholm had again been elected to the Legislature; and one of the first uses of Winthrop's freedom was to go with his father to Vantassel and drive the wagon home again.

One thing was gained by this journey. In Vantassel, Winthrop contrived to possess himself of a Greek lexicon and a Graeca Majora, and also a Greek grammar, though the only one he could get that suited his purse was the Westminster grammar, in which the alternatives of Greek were all Latin. That did not stagger him. He came home rich in his classical library, and very resolved to do something for himself this winter.

The day after his return from Vantassel, just as they had done supper, there was a knock at the front door. Winthrop went to open it. There he found a man, tall and personable, well- dressed though like a traveller, with a little leathern valise in his hand. Winthrop had hardly time to think he did not look like an American, when his speech confirmed it.

"How-do-you-do?" he said, using each word with a ceremony which shewed they were not denizens of his tongue. "I am wanting to make some résèrche in dis country, and I was directet here."

Winthrop asked him in, and then when he was seated, asked him what he wanted.

"I am wishing to know if you could let me live wiz you a few days -- I am wanting to be busy in your mountains, about my affairs, and I just want to know if you can let me have a bed to sleep on at night, and a little somet'ing to eat -- I would be very much obliged and I would pay you whatever you please -- "

"Mother," said Winthrop, "can you let this gentleman stay here a few days? he has business in the mountains, he says, and wants to stop here?"

"I do not wish to be no trouble to no person," he said blandly. "I was at a little house on de ozer side of de river, but I was told dere was no room for me, and I come to an ozer place and dey told me to come to dis place. I will not trouble no person -- I only want a place to put my head while my feet are going all over."

A moment's hesitation, and Mrs. Landholm agreed to this very moderate request; and Mr. Herder, as he gave his name, and his valise, were accommodated in the 'big bedroom.' This was the best room, occupying one corner of the front of the house, while the 'keeping-room' was at the other; a tiny entry-way, of hardly two square yards, lying between, with a door in each of three sides and a steep staircase in the fourth.

Winthrop presently came to ask if the stranger had had supper.

"I have not! But I will take anysing, what you please to give me."

Mr. Herder did not belie his beginning. He made himself much liked, both by the children and the grown people; and as he said, he gave as little trouble as possible. He seemed a hearty, genial nature, excessively devoted to his pursuits, which were those of a naturalist and kept him out of doors from morning till night; and in the house he shewed a particular simplicity both of politeness and kind feeling; in part springing perhaps from his German nature, and in part from the honest truthful acquaintance he was holding with the world of nature at large. "He acted like a great boy," old Karen said in wondering ridicule, -- "to be bringing in leaves, and sticks, and stones, as he was every night, and making his room such a mess she never saw!"

He had soon a marked liking and even marked respect for his young host. With his usual good-humour Winthrop helped him in his quest; now and then offered to go with him on his expeditions; tracked up the streams of brooks, shewed the paths of the mountains, rowed up the river and down the river; and often and often made his uncommon strength and agility avail for something which the more burly frame of the naturalist could not have attained. He was always ready; he was never wearied; and Mr. Herder found him an assistant as acute as he was willing.

"You do know your own woods -- better than I do!" -- he remarked one day when Winthrop had helped him out of a botanical difficulty.

"It's only the knowledge of the eye," Winthrop replied, with a profound feeling of the difference.

"But you do seem to love knowledge -- of every kind," said the naturalist, -- "and that is what I like."

"I have very little," said Winthrop. "I ought to love what I can get."

"That is goot," said Mr. Herder; -- "that is de right way. Ven I hear a man say, 'I have much knowledge,' -- I know he never will have much more; but ven I hear one say, 'I have a little,' -- I expect great things."

Winthrop was silent, and presently Mr. Herder went on.

"What kind of learning do you love de best?"

"I don't know, sir, really."

"What have you studied?"

Winthrop hesitated.

"A little Latin, sir."

"Latin! -- How much Latin have you read?"

"The Gospel of John, and nearly the first book of the Aeneid. But I have very little time."

"The Evangel of St. John, and the Aeneid. Are you going on to study it now?"

"Yes sir, -- as much as I can find time."

"Greek too?"

"No sir. I am only beginning."

"I ask, because I saw some Greek books on de table de ozer night and I wondered -- excuse me -- who was reading them. You do not know nothing of German?"

"No sir."

"Ah, you must learn de German -- dat is my language."

"I don't know my own language yet," said Winthrop.

"Vat is dat?"

"English."

"English! -- But how do you do, here amongst de hills -- is there somebody to learn you?"

"No sir."

"And you go by yourself? -- Vell, I believe you will climb anything," said Mr. Herder, with a little smile; "only it is goot to know what place to begin, -- as I have found."

"I must begin where I can, sir."

"But you should get to de Université; from dere it is more easy."

"I know that, sir; that is what I am trying to fit myself for."

"You do not need so much fitting -- you will fit yourself better there. I would get away to de Université. You will go up -- I see it in your face -- you will go up, like you go up these rocks; it is pretty steep, but you know, vere one person cannot stand, anozer will mount. And what will you do wiz yourself when you get to de top?"

"I don't know yet, sir," Winthrop said laughing.

"It is just so goot not to know," said Mr. Herder. "What thing a man may wish to make himself, no matter what, he should fit himself for some ozer thing. Or else, he may be just one thing -- he might be poet, or mathématicien, or musicien maybe, -- and not be a whole man. You understand?"

"Very well, sir."

"I did not know no more what I would be, when I first went to de Université of Halle I have been to seven Universités."

Winthrop looked at him, as if to see whether he were cased in sevenfold learning.

"I am not so very wise, neizer," he said laughing. "And now I am in de eight Université -- in Mannahatta -- and if you will come dere I will be very glad to see you."

"Thank you, sir; --but I am afraid Mannahatta would be too expensive for me."

"Perhaps. -- But vere will you go?"

"I don't know sir, yet."

"But ven you get through, you will come to Mannahatta and let me see what you have made of yourself?"

Winthrop shook his head. "I don't know when that will be, Mr. Herder."

They were walking through a tangled woodland, along one of the deep mountain gorges; the naturalist stopping frequently to give closer notice to something. He stood still here to examine a piece of rock.

"Will you let me give you one little direction," said he producing his little hammer, -- "two little direction, or I should call them big direction, which may be of some goot to you?"

"I wish you would, sir."

"In de first place den, don't never go half way through nozing. If some thing you want to know is in de middle of dat rock," said he striking it, "knock de rock all to pieces but what you will have it. I mean, when you begin, finish, and do it goot."

"That is what I think, Mr. Herder."

"In de second place," continued Mr. Herder, illustrating part of his former speech by hammering off some pieces of rock from the mass, -- "don't never think that no kind of knowledge is of no use to you. Dere is nozing dat it is not goot to know. You may say, it is no use to you to know dat colour of de outside of dis rock, and dis colour of de inside; you are wrong; you ought to learn to know it if you can; and you will find de use before you die, wizout you be a very misfortunate man. Dere is nozing little in dis world; all is truth, or it will help you find out truth; and you cannot know too much."

"I believe that, sir; and I will remember it."

"And when you have learned English and Latin and Greek, you will learn German?" said the naturalist, putting the fragments of rock in his pocket.

Winthrop laughed at his expression.

"Promise me dat you will. You will find it of use to you too."

"But all useful things are not possible," said Winthrop.

"I wish it was possible for you to bring down that bird," said the naturalist, gazing up towards a pair of huge wings above them; -- "It would be very useful to me." The creature was sailing through the distant ether in majestic style, moving its wings so little that they seemed an emblem of powerful repose.

"That is a white-headed eagle," said Winthrop.

"I know him!" said the naturalist, still gazing. "I wish I had him; -- but dat is a thing in which is no goot; as he is too far off for me to reach him. Better for him! And it will be better for us to go home, for the day is not very long."

Neither was Mr. Herder's stay in the mountains after that. At parting he assured Winthrop "he should be very glad to do him all the goot he could do, if he would only let him know how."

This was just after the fall of the leaf. The winter was a mild one, and so fruitful in business belonging to the farm that Winthrop's own private concerns had little chance. Latin was pushed a little, and Greek entered upon; neither of them could be forwarded much, with all the stress that hope or despair could make. Snowstorm, and thaw, and frost, and sun, came after and after each other, and as surely and constantly the various calls upon Winthrop's time; and every change seemed to put itself between him and his books. Mr. Landholm was kept late in Vantassel, by a long session, and the early spring business came all upon his son's hands.

Letters were rather infrequent things in those days, waiting, as they usually did, for private carriage. It was near the end of March that the rare event of two letters in one day happened to the quiet little household.

Winthrop got one at the post-office, with the Vantassel mark; and coming home found his mother sitting before the fire with another in her hand, the matter of which she was apparently studying.

"A letter, mamma?"

"Yes -- from Will."

"How did it come?"

"It came by Mr. Underhill."

"What's the matter? what does he say?"

"Not much -- you can see for yourself."

"And here's one from papa."

Mrs. Landholm took it, and Winthrop took Rufus's.

"Little River, March 18, 1809.

"What does papa mean to do? Something must be done, for I cannot stay here for ever; neither in truth do I wish it. If I am ever to make anything, it is time now. I am twenty-one, and in mind and body prepared, I think, for any line of enterprise to which fortune may call me. Or if nothing can be done with me, -- if what has been spent must be thrown away -- it is needless to throw away any more; it would be better for me to come home and settle down to the lot for which I seemed to be born. Nothing can be gained by waiting longer, but much lost.

"I am not desponding, but seriously this transition life I am leading at present is not very enlivening. I am neither one thing nor the other; I am in a chrysalis state, which is notoriously a dull one; and I have the further aggravation, which I suppose never occurs to the nymph bona fide, of a miserable uncertainty whether my folded-up wings are those of a purple butterfly or of a poor drudge of a beetle. Besides, it is conceivable that the chrysalis may get weary of his case, and mine is not a silken one. I have been here long enough. My aunt Landholm is very kind; but I think she would like an increase of her household accommodations, and also that she would prefer working it by the rule of subtraction rather than by the more usual and obvious way of addition. She is a good soul, but really I believe her larder contains nothing but pork, and her pantry nothing but -- pumpkins! She has actually contrived, by some abominable mystery of the kitchen, to keep some of them over through a period of frost and oblivion, and to-day they made their appearance in due form on the table again; my horror at which appearance has I believe given me an indigestion, to which you may attribute whatever of gloominess there may be contained in this letter. I certainly felt very heavy when I sat down; but the sight of all your faces through fancy's sweet medium has greatly refreshed me.

"Nevertheless answer me speedily, for I am in earnest, although I am in jest.

"I intend to see you at all events soon.

"Love to the little ones and to dear ma and pa from

"Rufus."

"What does father say, mother?" was all Winthrop's commentary on this epistle. She gave him the other letter, and he yielded his brother's again to her stretched-out hand.

"Vantassel, March 22, 1809.

"My dear Orphah,

"I am really coming home! I never knew any months so long, it seems to me, as these three. The business will be finished I believe next week, and the Session will rise, and the first use I shall make of my recovered freedom will be -- can you doubt it? -- to hasten home to my family. My dear family -- they are closer to me all the time than you think, and for some weeks past it seems to me they have had half of every thought. But I will be with you now, Providence willing, by the middle of the week, I hope, or as soon after as I can.

"The last fortnight has been spent in talking -- we have had a very stormy discussion of that point I spoke to you of in my last. The opposition of parties has run very high. It is gaining fearful ground in the country. I tremble for what may be the issue.

"I am quite well again. Mr. Haye has been very attentive and kind, and the Chancellor has shewn himself very friendly.

"I expect Will will be at home as soon as I am myself. I wrote to him that he had better do so. I cannot afford to keep him any longer there, and there seems nothing better for him to do at present but to come home. I hope for better days.

"Love to all till I see you, my dear wife and children,

"W. Landholm.

"My son Winthrop, this word is for you. I am coming home soon I hope to relieve you of so much care. Meanwhile a word. I want Sam to go into the north hill-field with the plough, as soon as he can; I think the frost must be out of the ground with you. I intend to put wheat there and in the big border meadow. The bend meadow is in no hurry; it will take corn, I guess. You had better feed out the turnips to the old black cow and the two heifers."

The letters were read at last, and folded up, by the respective hands that held them.

"Well, Will's coming home," the mother said, with half a sigh.

Winthrop did not answer; he made over to her hand the letter he held in his own.

"The north hill-field is pretty much all ploughed already," he remarked.

"You're a good farmer, Governor," said his mother. "But I am afraid that praise doesn't please you."

"Yes it does, mamma," he answered smiling a little.

"But it don't satisfy you?"

"No more than it does you, mamma. It helps my hope of being a good something else some day."

"I don't care much what you are, Governor, if it is only something good," she said.

He met her grave, wistful eyes, but this time he did not smile; and a stranger might have thought he was exceedingly unimpressible. Both were silent a bit.

"Well, it will be good to see them," Mrs. Landholm said, again with that half sighing breath; "and now we must make haste and get all ready to welcome them home."

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Chapter VII

Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him. TENNYSON.

What a coming home that was. Who could have guessed that any ungrateful cause had had anything to do with it. What kisses, what smiles, what family rejoicings at the table, what endless talks round the fire. What delight in the returned Member of Assembly; what admiration of the future Collegian. For nobody had given that up; wishes were bidden to wait awhile, that was all; and as the waiting had procured them this dear home- gathering, who could quarrel with it. Nay, there was no eye shaded, there was no voice untuned for the glad music of that time.

"Well it's worth going away, to come back again, ain't it?" said Mr. Landholm, when they were gathered round the fire that first evening.

"No," said his wife.

"Well, I didn't think so last winter," said the father of the family, drawing his broad hand over his eyes.

"I can tell you, I have thought so this great while," said Rufus. "It's -- it's seven or eight months now since I have been home."

"Papa," said little Winifred, squeezing in and climbing up on her father's knees, -- "we have wanted you every night."

"You did!" said her father, bending his face conveniently down to her golden curls; -- "and what did you do by day?"

"O we wanted you; but then you know we were so busy in the day-time."

"Busy!" said her father, -- "I guess you were busy!"

She made herself busy then, for putting both arms round his neck she pressed and kissed his face, till feeling grew too excited with the indulgence of it, and she lay with her head quite still upon his shoulder where nobody could see her eyes. The father's eyes told tales.

"I think Winifred has forgotten me," observed Rufus.

But Winifred was in no condition to answer the charge.

"Winifred doesn't forget anybody," said her father fondly. "We're none of us given to forgetting. I am thankful that we have one thing that some richer folks want -- we all love one another. Winifred, --I thought you were going to shew me that black kitten o' your'n?"

"I haven't any kitten, papa, -- it is Asahel's."

"Well, let Asahel bring it then."

Which Asahel did.

"Have you looked at the cattle, Mr. Landholm?" said his wife.

"No -- not yet -- this is the first specimen of live stock I've seen," said Mr. Landholm, viewing attentively a little black kitten which was sprawling very uncomfortably upon the painted floor. "I've heard of 'em though. Asahel has been giving me a detail at length of all the concerns of the farm. I think he'll make an excellent corresponding secretary by and by."

"I was only telling papa what Governor had been doing," said Asahel.

"You were afraid he would be forgotten. There, my dear, I would let the little cat go back to its mother."

"No papa, -- Asahel wanted you should know that Governor didn't forget."

"Did you ever hear of the time, Asahel," said his elder brother, "that a cat was sold by the length of her tail?"

"By the length of her tail!" said Asahel unbelievingly.

"Yes -- for as much wheat as would cover the tip of her tail when she was held so --"

And suiting the action to the word, Rufus suspended the kitten with its nose to the floor and the point of its tail at the utmost height it could reach above that level. Winifred screamed; Asahel sprang; Rufus laughed and held fast.

"It's a shame!" said Winifred.

"You have no right to do it!" said Asahel. "It isn't the law, if it was the law; and it was a very cruel law!"

But Rufus only laughed; and there seemed some danger of a break in that kindliness of feeling which their father had vaunted, till Mrs. Landholm spoke. A word and a look of hers, to one and the other, made all smooth; and they went on again talking, of happy nothings, till it was time to separate for the night. It was only then that Mr. Landholm touched on any matter of more than slight interest.

"Well, Rufus," he said when at last they rose from their chairs, -- "are you all ready for College?"

"Yes sir."

A little shadow upon both faces -- a very little.

"I am glad of it. Well keep ready; -- you'll go yet one of these days -- the time will come. You must see if you can't be contented to keep at home a spell. We'll shove you off by and by."

Neither party very well satisfied with the decision, but there was no more to be said.

To keep at home was plain enough; to be contented was another matter. Rufus joined again in the farm concerns; the well-worn Little River broadcloth was exchanged for homespun; and Winthrop's plough, and hoe, and axe, were mated again as in former time they used to be. This at least was greatly enjoyed by the brothers. There was a constant and lively correspondence between them, on all matters of interest, past, present, and future, and on all matters of speculation attainable by either mind; and though judgments and likings were often much at variance, and the issues, to the same argument, were not always the same with each; on one point, the delight of communication, they were always at one. Clearly Rufus had no love for the axe, nor for the scythe, but he could endure both while talking with Winthrop; though many a time it would happen that axe and scythe would be lost in the interest of other things; and leaning on his snathe, or flinging his axe into a cut, Rufus would stand to argue, or demonstrate, or urge, somewhat just then possessing all his faculties; till a quiet reminder of his brother's would set him to laughing and to work again; and sweetly moved the scythes through the grass, and cheerily rung the axes, for the winrows were side by side and the ringing answered from tree to tree. And the inside of home gave Rufus pleasure too. Yet there were often times, -- when talk was at a standstill, and mother's "good things" were not on the table, with a string of happy faces round it, and neither axe nor scythe kept him from a present feeling of inaction, -- that the shadow reappeared on Rufus's brow. He would sit in the chimney corner, looking far down into the hearth-stones, or walk moodily up and down the floor, behind the backs of the other people, with a face that seemed to belong to some waste corner of society.

"My son," said Mrs. Landholm, one evening when Mr. Landholm was out and the little ones in bed, -- "what makes you wear such a sober face?"

"Nothing, mother, -- only that I am doing nothing."

"Are you sure of that? Your father was saying that he never saw anybody sow broadcast with a finer hand -- he said you had done a grand day's work to day."

An impatiently drawn breath was the answer.

"Rufus, nobody is doing nothing who is doing all that God gives him leave to do."

"No mother -- and nobody ever will do much who does not hold that leave is given him to make of himself the utmost that he can."

"And what is that?" she said quietly.

Nobody spoke; and then Rufus said, not quietly,

"Depends on circumstances, ma'am; -- some one thing and some another."

"My son Rufus, -- we all have the same interest at heart with you."

"I am sorry for it, ma'am; I would rather be disappointed alone."

"I hope there will be no disappointment -- I do not look for any, in the end. Cannot you bear a little present disappointment?"

"I do bear it, ma'am."

"But Winthrop has the very same things at stake as you have, and I do not see him wear such a disconsolate face, -- ever."

"Winthrop --" the speaker began, and paused, every feature of his fine face working with emotion. His hearers waited, but whatever lay behind, nothing more of his meaning came out.

"Winthrop what? --" said his brother laughing.

"You are provokingly cool!" said the other, his eye changing again.

"You have a right to find fault with that," said Winthrop still laughing, "for certainly it is a quality with which you never provoked anybody."

Rufus seemed to be swallowing more provocation than he had expressed.

"What were you going to say of me, Rufus?" said the other seriously.

"Nothing --"

"If you meant to say that I have not the same reason to be disappointed that you have, you are quite right."

"I meant to say that; and I meant to say that you do not feel any disappointment as much as I do."

Winthrop did not attempt to mend this position. He only mended the fire.

"I wish you need not be disappointed!" the mother said sighing, looking at the fire with a very earnest face.

"My dear mother," said Winthrop cheerfully, "it is no use to wish that in this world."

"Yes it is -- for there is a way to escape disappointments, -- if you would take it."

"To escape disappointments!" said Rufus.

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Will you promise to follow it?"

"No mother," he said, with again a singular play of light and shade over his face; -- "for it will be sure to be some impossible way. I mean -- that an angel's wings may get over the rough ground where poor human feet must stumble."

How much the eyes were saying that looked at each other!

"There is provision even for that," she answered. "'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings,' so the Lord declares he did once lead his people, -- and he will again, -- over rough ground or smooth."

"My dear mother," said Rufus, "you are very good, and I -- am not very good."

"I don't know that that is much to the point," she said smiling a little.

"Yes it is."

"Do you mean to say you cannot go the road that others have gone, with the same help?"

"If I should say yes, I suppose you would disallow it," he replied, beginning to walk up and down again; "but my consciousness remains the same."

There was both trouble and dissatisfaction in his face.

"Will your consciousness stand this? -- 'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles,' -- just what you were wishing for, Rufus; -- 'they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.'"

He was silent a minute; and then replied, "That will always continue to be realized by some and not by others."

"If you were as easily disheartened in another line, Rufus, you would never go through College."

"My dear mother!" he said, "if you were to knock all my opinions to pieces with the Bible, it wouldn't change me."

"I know it!" she said.

There was extreme depression in voice and lip, and she bent down her face on her hand.

Two turns the length of the room Rufus took; then he came to the back of her chair and laid his hand upon her shoulder.

"But mother," he said cheerfully, "you haven't told us the way to escape disappointments yet; I didn't understand it. For aught I see, everybody has his share. Even you -- and I don't know who deserves them less -- even you, I am afraid, are disappointed, in me."

It was as much as he could do, evidently, to say that; his eyes were brilliant through fire and water at once. She lifted up her head, but was quite silent.

"How is it, mamma? or how can it be?"

"I must take you to the Bible again, Rufus."

"Well, ma'am, I'll go with you. Where?"

She turned over the leaves till she found the place, and giving it to him bade him read.

"'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate, day and night.

"'And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in due season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.'"

Rufus stopped and stood looking on the page.

"Beautiful words!" he said.

"They will bear looking at," said Mrs. Landholm.

"But my dear mother, I never heard of anybody in my life of whom this was true."

"How many people have you heard of, in your life, who answered the description?"

Rufus turned and began to walk up and down again.

"But suppose he were to undertake something not well -- not right?"

"The security reaches further back," said Winthrop.

"You forget," said his mother, "he could not do that; or could not persist in it."

Rufus walked, and the others sat still and looked at the fire, till the opening of the door let in Mr. Landholm and a cold blast of air; which roused the whole party. Winthrop put more wood on the fire; Mr. Landholm sat down in the corner and made himself comfortable; and Mrs. Landholm fetched an enormous tin pan of potatoes and began paring them. Rufus presently stopped behind her chair, and said softly, "What's that for, mother?"

"For your breakfast to-morrow, sir."

"Where is Karen?"

"In bed."

"Why don't you let her do them, mother?"

"She has not time, my son."

Rufus stood still and looked with a discontented face at the thin blue-veined fingers in which the coarse dirty roots were turning over and over.

"I've got a letter from my friend Haye to-day," Mr. Landholm said.

"What Haye is that?" said his wife.

"What Haye? --there's only one that I know of; my old friend Haye -- you've heard me speak of him a hundred times. I used to know him long ago in Mannahatta when I lived at Pillicoddy; and we have been in the Legislature together, time and again."

"I remember now," said Mrs. Landholm paring her potatoes. "What does he want?"

"What do you guess he wants?"

"Something from the farm, I suppose."

"Not a bit of it."

"Mr. Haye of Asphodel?" said Rufus.

"Asphodel? no, of Mannahatta; -- he used to be at Asphodel."

"What does he want, sir?"

"I am going to tell your mother by and by. It's her concern."

"Well tell it," said Mrs. Landholm.

"How would you like to have some company in the house this summer?"

Mrs. Landholm laid the potatoe and her knife and her hands down in the pan and looking up asked, "What sort of company?"

"You know he has no wife this many years?"

"Yes --"

"Well -- he's a couple of little girls that he wants to put somewhere in the country this summer, for their health, I understand."

Mrs. Landholm took up her knife again and pared potatoes diligently.

"Does he want to send them here?"

"He intimates as much; and I have no doubt he would be very glad. It wouldn't be a losing concern to us, neither. He would be willing to pay well, and he can afford it."

"What has he done with his own place, at Asphodel?" said Winthrop.

"Sold it, he tells me. Didn't agree with his daughter, the air there, or something, and he says he couldn't be at the bother of two establishments without a housekeeper in nary one of 'em. And I think he's right. I don't see how he could."

Winthrop watched the quick mechanical way in which his mother's knife followed the paring round and round the potatoes, and he longed to say something. "But it is not my affair," he thought; "it is for Rufus. It is not my business to speak."

Nobody else spoke for a minute.

"What makes him want to send his children here?" said Mrs. Landholm without looking up from her work.

"Partly because he knows me, I suppose; and maybe he has heard of you. Partly because he knows this is just the finest country in the world, and the finest air, and he wants them to run over the hills and pick wild strawberries and drink country milk, and all that sort of thing. It's just the place for them, as I told him once, I remember."

"You told him! --"

"Yes. He was saying something about not knowing what to do with his girls last winter, and I remember I said to him that he had better send them to me; but I had no more idea of his taking it up, at the time, than I have now of going to Egypt."

Mrs. Landholm did not speak.

"You have somewhere you can put them, I suppose?"

"There's nobody in the big bedroom."

"Well, do you think you can get along with it? or will it give you too much trouble?"

"I am afraid they would never be satisfied, Mr. Landholm, with the way we live."

"Pho! I'll engage they will. Satisfied! they never saw such butter and such bread in their lives, I'll be bound, as you can give them. If they aren't satisfied it'll do 'em good."

"But bread and butter isn't all, Mr. Landholm; what will they do with our dinners, without fresh meat?"

"What will they do with them? Eat 'em, fast enough, only you have enough. I'll be bound their appetites will take care of the rest, after they have been running over the mountains all the morning. You've some chickens, hav'n't you? -- and I could get a lamb now and then from neighbour Upshur; and here's Winthrop can get you birds and fish any day in the year."

"Winthrop will hardly have time."

"Yes he will; and if he don't we can call in Anderese. He's a pretty good hunter."

"I'm not a bad one," said Rufus.

"And you have Karen to help you. I think it will be a very fine thing, and be a good start maybe towards Rufus's going to College."

Another pause, during which nothing moved but the knife and Mrs. Landholm's fingers.

"Well -- what do you say?" said her husband.

"If you think it will do -- I am willing to try," she answered.

"I know it will do; and I'll go and write directly to Haye -- I suppose he'd like to know; and to-morrow my hands will have something to hold besides pens."

There was profound silence again for a little after he went out.

"How old are these children?" Mrs. Landholm said.

Neither answered promptly.

"I saw one of them when I was at Asphodel," said Winthrop; "and she was a pretty wellgrown girl; she must have been thirteen or fourteen."

"And that was a year and a half ago! Is her sister younger or older?"

"It isn't her sister," said Rufus; "it's her cousin, I believe; Mr. Haye is her guardian. She's older."

"How much?"

"A year or two -- I don't know exactly."

Mrs. Landholm rose and took up her pan of potatoes with an air that seemed to say Miss Haye and her cousin were both in it, and carried it out into the kitchen.

Some little time had passed, and Winthrop went there to look for her. She had put her pan down on the hearth, and herself by it, and there she was sitting with her arms round her knees.

Winthrop softly came and placed himself beside her.

"Mother --"

She laid her hand upon his knee, without speaking to him or looking at him.

"Mother -- I'll be your provider."

"I would a great deal rather be yours, Governor," she said, turning to him a somewhat wistful face.

"There isn't anything in the world I would rather," said he, kissing her cheek.

She gave him a look that was reward enough.

"I wonder how soon they will come," she said.

"That is what I was just asking; and pa said he supposed as soon as the weather was settled."

"That won't be yet awhile. You must see and have a good garden, Governor. Perhaps it will be all for the best."

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Chapter VIII

Hills questioning the heavens for light -- Ravines too deep to scan! As if the wild earth mimicked there The wilder heart of man; Only it shall be greener far And gladder, than hearts ever are. E. B. BROWNING.

It was the first of June; a fair lovely summer morning, June- like.

"I suppose Mr. Haye will come with them," said Mr. Landholm, as he pushed back his chair from the breakfast-table; -- "have you anywhere you can put him?"

"There's the little bedroom, he can have," said Mrs. Landholm. "Asahel can go in the boys' room."

"Very good. Winthrop, you had better take the boat down in good time this afternoon so as to be sure and be there -- I can't be spared a moment from the bend meadow. The grass there is just ready to be laid. It's a very heavy swath. I guess there's all of three tons to the acre."

"Take the boat down where?" said Asahel.

"To Cowslip's mill," said his brother. "What time will the stage be along, sir?"

"Not much before six, I expect. You'll have the tide with you to go down."

"It's well to look at the fair side of a subject," said Winthrop, as his father left the room.

"May I go with you, Governor?" said Asahel.

"No sir."

"Why?"

"Because I shall have the tide hard against me coming back."

"But I am not much, and your arms are strong," urged Asahel.

"Very true. Well -- we'll see. Mother, do you want any fish to- day?"

A sort of comical taking of the whole subject somehow was expressed under these words, and set the whole family a- laughing, All but Rufus; he was impenetrable. He sat finishing his breakfast without a word, but with a certain significant air of the lip and eyebrow, and dilating nostril, which said something was wrong.

It was the fairest of summer afternoons; the sky June's deep and full-coloured blue, the sun gay as a child, the hills in their young summer dress, just put on; and the water, -- well, it was running down very fast, but it was running quietly, and lying under the sky and the sunshine it sparkled back their spirit of life and joy. The air was exceeding clear, and the green outlines of the hills rose sharp against the blue sky.

Winthrop stood a minute on one of the rocks at the water's edge to look, and then stepped from that to the one where his boat was moored, and began to undo the chain.

"Are you going down after those people?" said the voice of Rufus behind him. It sounded in considerable disgust.

"What do you advise?" said Winthrop without looking up.

"I would see them at the bottom of the river first!"

"Bad advice," said Winthrop. "It would be a great deal harder to go after them there."

"Do you know what effect your going now will have?"

"Upon them?"

"No, upon you."

"Well -- no," said Winthrop looking at the river; "I shall have a pull up, but I shall hardly hear any news of that to- morrow."

"It will make them despise you!"

"That would be rather an effect upon them," said Winthrop, throwing the loosened chain into the boat's head and stepping in himself; -- "as it strikes me."

"I wish you would take my advice," said Rufus.

"Which?" said his brother.

"Let them alone!"

"I will," said Winthrop; "I mean that."

"You are excessively provoking!"

"Are you sure?" said Winthrop smiling. "What do you propose that I should do, Rufus?"

"Send Sam Doolittle in your place."

"Willingly; but it happens that he could not fill my place. You must see that."

"And are you going to bring up their baggage and all?"

"I must know the sum of two unknown quantities before I can tell whether it is just equal to a boat-load."

Rufus stood on the shore, biting his lip. The little boat was silently slipping out from between the rocks, after a light touch or two of the oars, when Asahel came bounding down the road and claimed Winthrop's promise for a place in it.

"You don't want this child with you!" said Rufus.

But Winthrop gave one or two pushes in the reverse direction and with great skill laid the skiff alongside of the rock. Asahel jumped in triumphantly, and again slowly clearing the rocks the little boat took the tide and the impulse of a strong arm at once, and shot off down the stream.

They kept the mid-channel, and with its swift current soon came abreast of the high out-jutting headland behind which the waters turned and hid themselves from the home view. Diver's Rock, it was called, from some old legend now forgotten. A few minutes more, and the whole long range of the river below was plain in sight, down to a mountain several miles off, behind which it made yet another sharp turn and was again lost. In that range the river ran a little west of south; just before rounding Diver's Rock its direction was near due east, so that the down tide at the turn carried them well over towards the eastern shore. That was what they wanted, as Cowslip's mill was on that side. So keeping just far enough from the shore to have the full benefit of the ebb, they fell softly and quick down the river; with a changing panorama of rocks and foliage at their side, the home promontory of Shahweetah lying in sight just north of them, and over it the heads of the northern mountains; while a few miles below, where the river made its last turn, the mountains on either side locked into one another and at once checked and rested the eye. The lines of ground there were beautiful; the western light sported among them, dividing hill from hill, and crowning their heads with its bright glory. It was the dynasty of the East, just then. The eastern mountains sat in stately pride; and their retainers, the woods, down to the water side, glittered in the royal green and silver; for on their fresh unsullied leaves the light played with many a sheen. The other shore was bright enough still; but the shadows were getting long and the sun was getting low, and the contrast was softly and constantly growing.

"It's pretty, aint it, Winthrop?" said Asahel.

"Yes."

"I wonder what's the reason you row so much better than Rufus -- Rufus bites his lip, and works so, and makes such a splash, -- and you don't seem as if you worked at all."

"Perhaps because I am stronger," said Winthrop.

"Rufus is strong enough. But that can't be the reason you do everything better than he does."

"That don't happen to be the state of the case."

"Yes it does; for you always catch the most fish, and papa said last summer he never saw any one bind and tie as fast as you did."

Again silently the boat fell down along the shore, a little dark speck amidst the glow of air and water.

"How nice you look in your white jacket and trousers," said Asahel.

"I am glad to hear it," said Winthrop laughing. "Is it such an uncommon thing?"

"It is uncommon for you to look so nice. You must take great care of them, Winthrop; -- it took mother so long to make them."

"I have another pair, boy," said Winthrop, biting his lips, as the boat rounded to the little flight of steps at Cowslip's mill.

"Yes, but then you know, Karen -- There's the stage, Governor! -- and the folks are come, I guess. Do you see those heads poking out of the windows?" --

"You stay here and mind the boat, Asahel."

And Winthrop sprang ashore and went up to the crossing where the stage-coach had stopped.

At 'Cowslip's mill' there was a sloop landing; a sort of wharf was built there; and close upon the wharf the mill and storage house kept and owned by Mr. Cowslip. From this central point a road ran back over the hills into the country, and at a little distance it was cut by the high road from Vantassel. Here the stage had stopped.

By the time Winthrop got there, most of the effects he was to take charge of had been safely deposited on the ground. Two young ladies, and a gentleman seeming not far from young, stood at the end of the coach to watch the success of the driver and Mr. Cowslip in disinterring sundry trunks and boxes from under the boot and a load of other trunks and boxes.

"Where's Mr. Landholm? isn't Mr. Landholm here?" said the gentleman impatiently.

"There's somebody from Mr. Landholm ahint you," remarked Mr. Cowslip in the course of tugging out one of the trunks.

The gentleman turned.

"Mr. Landholm could not be here, sir," said Winthrop; "but his boat is here, and he has sent me to take care of it."

"He has! Couldn't come himself, eh? I'm sorry for that. -- The box from the top of the stage, driver -- that's all. -- Do you understand the management of a boat?" said he eyeing Winthrop a little anxiously.

"Certainly, sir," said Winthrop. "I am accustomed to act as Mr. Landholm's boatman. I am his son."

"His son, are you! Ah well, that makes all straight. I can trust you. Not his eldest son?"

"No sir."

"I thought it couldn't be the same. Well he's a deuced handsome pair of sons, tell him. I'm very sorry I can't stop, -- I am obliged to go on now, and I must put my daughter and Miss Cadwallader in your charge, and trust you to get them safe home. I will be along and come to see you in a few days."

"The trunks is all out, sir," said the driver. "We oughtn't to stop no longer. It's a bad piece atween here and Bearfoot."

"I leave it all to you, then," said Mr. Haye. "Elizabeth, this young gentleman will see you and your baggage safe home. You won't want me. I'll see you next week."

He shook hands and was off, stage-coach and all. And Mr. Cowslip and Winthrop were left mounting guard over the baggage and the ladies. Elizabeth gave a comprehensive glance at the "young gentleman" designated by her father, and then turned it upon the black leather and boards which waited to be disposed of.

"You won't want the hull o' this for ballast, I guess, Winthrop, this arternoon," remarked Mr. Cowslip. "You'll have to leave some of it 'long o' me."

"Can't it all go?" said Elizabeth.

"It would be too much for the boat," said Winthrop.

"If 'twouldn't for you," -- Mr. Cowslip remarked in a kind of aside.

"Isn't there another boat?"

"There is another boat," said Mr. Cowslip -- "there's mine -- but she's up stream somewheres; comin' along, I guess, but she won't be here time enough for your purposes."

It was necessary to make a selection. The selection was made, and two stout trunks were successively borne down to the shore by the hands of Winthrop and Mr. Cowslip and stowed in the boat's bow. The two girls had walked down and stood looking on.

"But I haven't got any books!" said Elizabeth suddenly when she was invited to get in herself. "Won't the book-box go?"

"Is it that 'ere big board box?" inquired Mr. Cowslip. "Won't do! It's as heavy as all the nation."

"It will not do to put anything more in the boat," said Winthrop.

"I can't go without books," said Elizabeth.

"You'll have 'em in the mornin'," suggested the miller.

"O leave it, Lizzie, and come along!" said her companion. "See how late it's getting."

"I can't go without some books," said Elizabeth; "I shouldn't know what to do with myself. You are sure you can't take the box?"

"Certainly," said Winthrop smiling. "She would draw too much water, with this tide."

"Yes, you'd be on the bottom and no mistake, when you got in the bay," said Mr. Cowslip.

Elizabeth looked from one to the other.

"Then just get something and open the box if you please," she said, indicating her command to Winthrop; "and I will take out a few, till I get the rest."

"O Lizzie!" urged her companion, -- "let the books wait!"

But she and her expostulation got no sort of attention. Miss Lizzie walked up the hill again to await the unpacking of the box. Miss Cadwallader straightened herself against a post, while Mr. Cowslip and Winthrop went to the store for a hammer.

"She's got spunk in her, ha'n't she, that little one?" said the miller. "She's a likely lookin' little gal, too. But I never seen any one so fierce arter books, yet."

Tools were soon found, in Mr. Cowslip's store, but the box was strongly put together and the opening of it was not a very speedy business. The little proprietor looked on patiently. When it was open, Miss Lizzie was not very easy to suit. With great coolness she stood and piled up book after book on the uncovered portion of the box, till she had got at those she wanted. She pleased herself with two or three, and then the others were carefully put back again; and she stood to watch the fastening up of the box as it was before.

"It will be safe here?" she said to the miller.

"Safe enough!" he answered. "There's nobody here 'll want to pry open these here books, agin this night."

"And will the other things be safe?" said Miss Cadwallader, who had come up the hill again in despair. The miller glanced at her.

"Safe as your hair in curl-papers. You can be comfortable. Now then --"

The sun was not far from the mountain tops, when at last Miss Lizzie stood again at the water's edge with her volumes. Miss Cadwallader grumbled a little, but it met the utmost carelessness. The tide was very low; but by the help of Winthrop in the boat and Mr. Cowslip on the muddy steps, the young ladies were safely passed down and seated in the stern- sheets, not without two or three little screams on the part of Miss Cadwallader. The other, quite silent, looked a little strangely at the water coming within three or four inches of her dress, an expression of grave timidity becoming her dark eye much better than the look it had worn a few minutes before. As the boat lurched a little on pushing off, the colour started to her cheeks, and she asked "if there was any danger?"

"Not the least," Winthrop said.

Elizabeth gave another look at the very self-possessed calm face of her boatman, and then settled herself in her place with the unmistakable air of a mind at ease.

The boat had rounded the corner of the wharf and fell into its upward track, owing all its speed now to the rower's good arm; for a very strong down tide was running against them. They crept up, close under the shore, the oars almost touching the rocks; but always, as if a spirit of divination were in her, the little boat turned its head from the threatened danger, edged in and out of the mimic bays and hollows in the shores, and kept its steady onward way. The scene was a fairy-land scene now. Earth, water, and air, were sparkling with freshness and light. The sunlight lay joyously in the nest of the southern mountains, and looked over the East, and smiled on the heads of the hills in the north; while cool shadows began to walk along the western shore. Far up, a broad shoulder of the mountain stood out in bright relief under the sun's pencil; then lower down, the same pencil put a glory round the heads of the valley cedars; the valley was in shadow. Sharp and clear shewed sun-touched points of rock on the east shore, in glowing colours; and on the west the hills raised huge shadowy sides towards the sun, whom they threatened they would hide from his pensioners. And the sun stood on the mountain's brow and blinked at the world, and then dropped down; and the West had it! Not yet, but soon.

The two girls were not unmindful of all the brightness about them, for their eyes made themselves very busy with it, and little low-toned talks were held which now and then let a word escape, of "pretty!" -- and "lovely!" -- and "wouldn't it be lovely to have a little boat here? -- I'll ask papa!" --

"Is it hard to row?" asked the last speaker suddenly of Winthrop.

"No," he said, "not at all, wind and water quiet."

"Aren't they quiet to-night?"

"The tide is running down very strong. Asahel, trim the boat."

"How on earth can such a child do anything to the boat?" said Miss Cadwallader. "What do you want done, sir?"

"Nothing," he said. "It is done."

"What is done?" said the young lady, with a wondering face to her companion. "Oh aren't you hungry?" she added with a yawn. "I am, dreadfully. I hope we shall get a good supper."

"Whereabouts is Mr. Landholm's house?" said Elizabeth presently. Winthrop lay on his oars to point it out to her.

"That?" she said, somewhat expressively.

"Then why don't you go straight there?" inquired her companion. "You are going directly the other way."

A slight fiction; but the boat had turned into the bay, and was following the curve of its shores, which certainly led down deep into the land from the farmhouse point.

"I go here for the eddy."

"He is going right," said Asahel, who was sitting on the thwart next to the ladies.

"Eddy?" said Miss Cadwallader, with a blank look at her cousin.

"What is an eddy?" said Elizabeth.

"The return water from a point the tide strikes against."

Elizabeth eyed the water, the channel, and the points, and was evidently studying the matter out.

"What a lovely place!" she said.

"I wonder if the strawberries are ripe," said Miss Cadwallader. "Little boy, are there any strawberries in your woods?"

"My name is Asahel," said the 'little boy' gravely.

"Is it? I am very glad indeed to know it. Are there any strawberries in the woods here?"

"Lots of 'em," said Asahel.

"Are they ripe yet?"

"I haven't seen more than half a dozen," said Asahel.

"They are just beginning in the sunny spots," said his brother smiling.

"And do you have anything else here besides strawberries?"

The question was put to Asahel. He looked a little blank. It was a broad one.

"Any other fruit," said Elizabeth.

"Plenty," said Asahel.

"What?" said Miss Cadwallader; "tell us, will you; for I've come here to live upon wild fruit."

"Yes, ma'am," said Asahel staring a little; -- "there's red raspberries, and black raspberries, and low-bush blackberries and high blackberries, and huckleberries, and bearberries, and cranberries; besides nuts, and apples. I guess that ain't all."

"Thank you," said his questioner. "That will do. I don't intend to stay till nut-time. Oh what a way it is round this bay!"

"I wish it was longer," said Elizabeth.

The sun had left all the earth and betaken himself to the clouds; and there he seemed to be disporting himself with all the colours of his palette. There were half a dozen at a time flung on his vapoury canvass, and those were changed and shaded, and mixed and deepened, -- till the eye could but confess there was only one such storehouse of glory. And when the painting had faded, and the soft scattering masses were left to their natural grey, here a little silvered and there a little reddened yet, -- the whole West was still lit up with a clear white radiance that shewed how hardly the sun's bright track could be forgotten.

"Are we here!" said Elizabeth with a half sigh, as the boat touched the rocks.

"Yes, to be sure," said her cousin. "Where have you been?"

"In the clouds; and I am sorry to come down again."

Mr. Landholm was standing on the rocks, and a very frank and hearty reception he gave them. With him they walked up to the house; Asahel staid behind to wait till Winthrop had made fast the boat.

"How do you like 'em, Governor?" whispered the little boy, crouching upon the rocks to get nearer his brother's ear.

"How do I like 'em?" said Winthrop; -- "I can't like anybody upon five minutes' notice."

"One of 'em's pretty, ain't she? -- the one with the light- coloured hair?"

"I suppose so," said Winthrop, tying his chain.

"I guess they like it here pretty well," Asahel went on. "Didn't you see how they looked at everything?"

"No."

"They looked up, and they looked down, and on one side and the other side; and every now and then they looked at you."

"And what did you look at?"

"I looked at them, -- some."

"Well," said Winthrop laughing, "don't look at them too much, Asahel."

"Why not?"

"Why, you wouldn't want to do anything too much, would you?"

"No. But what would be too much?"

"So much that they would find it out."

"Well, they didn't find it out this evening," said Asahel.

But that little speech went home, and for half the way as he walked up to the house holding Asahel's hand, there was something like bitterness in the heart of the elder brother. So long, but no longer. They had got only so far when he looked down at the little boy beside him and spoke with his usual calm clearness of tone, entire and unchanged.

"Then they aren't as clear-sighted as I am, Asahel, for I always know when you are looking at me."

"Ah, I don't believe you do!" said Asahel laughing up at him; "I very often look at you when you don't look at me."

"Don't trust to that," said Winthrop.

There was in the little boy's laugh, and in the way he wagged his brother's hand backwards and forwards, a happy and confident assurance that Winthrop could do anything, that it was good to do.

Everybody was at the supper-table; there was nothing for Winthrop then to do but to take his place; but his countenance to his mother, all supper-time, was worth a great deal. His cool collected face at her side heartened her constantly, though he scarcely spoke at all. Mr. Landholm played the part of host with no drawback to his cheerfulness; talked a great deal, and pressed all the good things of the table upon Miss Cadwallader; who laughing, talking, and eating, managed to do her full share of all three. She was certainly very pretty. Her "light-coloured" hair was not so light as to be uncomely, and fell in luxuriant ringlets all round the sides of her pretty head; and the head moved about enough to shake the ringlets, till they threatened to form a mazy net to catch men's eyes. The prettiest mouth in the world, set with two little rows of the most kissable teeth, if that feature ever is contemplated in a kiss; and like the ringlets, the lips seemed to be in a compact to do as much mischief as they could; to keep together and mind their own business was the last thing thought of. Yet it was wonderful how much business they managed to transact on their own account, too. The other girl sat grave and reserved, even almost with an air of shyness, eat much less, and talked none at all; and indeed her face was pale and thin, and justified what her father had said about her wanting the country. Rufus seemed to have got back his good-humour. He quite kept up the credit of his side of the table.

Immediately after supper the two girls went to their room.

"Well, how do you like 'em?" said Mr. Landholm. "Did ye ever see a prettier creature, now, than that Rose? Her face is like a rose itself."

"It is more like a peach-blossom," said Rufus.

"The little one don't look well," said Mrs. Landholm.

"I wonder who'll go strawberrying with them," said Asahel.

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Chapter IX

Mat. "He is of a rustical cut, I know not how; he doth not carry himself like a gentleman of fashion." Wet. "Oh, Mr. Matthew, that's a grace peculiar but to a few." EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.

The 'big bedroom,' which belonged to the strangers by right of usage, opened from the kitchen; with another door upon the tiny entry-way once described. It had a fireplace, at present full of green pine bushes; a very clean bed covered with patchwork; the plainest of chairs and a table; and a little bit of carpet on one spot of the floor; the rest was painted. One little window looked to the south; another to the east; the woodwork, of doors and windows, exceeding homely and unpainted. An extraordinary gay satin toilet-cushion; and over it a little looking-glass, surrounded and surmounted with more than an equal surface of dark carved wooden framing.

It was to this unwonted prospect that the early June sun opened the young ladies' eyes the next morning. Elizabeth had surveyed it quietly a few minutes, when a little rustling of the patchwork called her attention to the shaking shoulders of her companion. Miss Cadwallader's pretty face lay back on the pillow, her eyes shut tight, and her open mouth expressing all the ecstatic delight that could be expressed without sound.

"What is the matter?" said Elizabeth.

Her cousin only laughed the harder and clapped her hands over her eyes, as if quite beyond control of herself. Elizabeth did not ask again.

"Isn't this a funny place we've come to!" said Miss Cadwallader at last, relapsing.

"I don't see anything very laughable," said Elizabeth.

"But isn't it a quizzical place?"

"I dare say. Every place is."

"Pshaw! don't be obstinate, -- when you think just as I do."

"I never did yet, about anything," said Elizabeth.

"Well, how do you like eating in a room with a great dresser of tin dishes on one side and the fire where your meat was cooked on the other? -- in June?"

"I didn't see the tin dishes; and there wasn't any fire, of consequence."

"But did you ever see such a gallant old farmer? Isn't he comical? didn't he keep it up?"

"Not better than you did," said Elizabeth.

"But isn't he comical?"

"No; neither comical nor old. I thought you seemed to like him very well."

"O, one must do something. La! you aren't going to get up yet?"

But Elizabeth was already at the south window and had it open. Early it was; the sun not more than half an hour high, and taking his work coolly, like one who meant to do a great deal before the day was ended. A faint dewy sparkle on the grass and the sweetbriars; the song sparrows giving good-morrow to each other and tuning their throats for the day; and a few wood thrushes now and then telling of their shyer and rarer neighbourhood. The river was asleep, it seemed, it lay so still.

"Lizzie! -- you ought to be in bed yet these two hours -- I shall tell Mr. Haye, if you don't take care of yourself."

"Have the goodness to go to sleep, and let me and Mr. Haye take care of each other," said the girl dryly.

Her cousin looked at her a minute, and then turning her eyes from the light, obeyed her first request and went fast asleep.

A little while after the door opened and Elizabeth stood in the kitchen. It was already in beautiful order. She could sec the big dresser now, but the tin and crockery and almost the wooden shelves shone, they were so clean. And they shone in the light of an opposite fire; but though the second of June, the air so early in the morning was very fresh; Elizabeth found it pleasant to take her stand on the hearth, near the warm blaze. And while she stood there, first came in Karen and put on the big iron tea-kettle; and then came Mrs. Landholm with a table-cloth and began to set the table. Elizabeth looked alternately at her and at the tea-kettle; both almost equally strange; she rather took a fancy to both. Certainly to the former. Her gown was spare, shewing that means were so, and her cap was the plainest of muslin caps, without lace or bedecking; yet in the quiet ordering of gown and cap and the neat hair, a quiet and ordered mind was almost confessed; and not many glances at the calm mouth and grave brow and thoughtful eye, would make the opinion good. It was a very comfortable home picture, Elizabeth thought, in a different line of life from that she was accustomed to, -- the farmer's wife and the tea-kettle, the dresser and the breakfast table, and the wooden kitchen floor and the stone hearth. She did not know what a contrast she made in it; her dainty little figure, very nicely dressed, standing on the flag-stones before the fire. Mrs. Landholm felt it, and doubted.

"How do you like the place, Miss Haye?" she ventured.

To her surprise the answer was an energetic, "Very much."

"Then you are not afraid of living in a farm-house?"

"If I don't like living in it, I'll live out of it," said Elizabeth, returning a very dignified answer to Winthrop's 'good-morning' as he passed through the kitchen.

"Are you going down to Cowslip's mill, Governor?" said Mrs. Landholm.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You will lose your breakfast."

"I must take the turn of the tide. Never mind breakfast."

"Going down after my trunks?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll go too. Wait a minute!"

And she was in her room before a word could be said.

"But Miss Haye," said Mrs. Landholm, as she came out with bonnet and shawl, "you won't go without your breakfast? It will be ready long before you can get back."

"Breakfast can wait."

"But you will want it."

"No -- I don't care if I do."

And down she ran to the rocks, followed by Asahel.

There was a singular still sweetness in the early summer morning on the water. The air seemed to have twice the life it had the evening before; the light was fair, beyond words to tell. Here its fresh gilding was upon a mountain slope; there it stretched in a long misty beam athwart a deep valley; it touched the broken points of rock, and glanced on the river, and seemed to make merry with the birds; fresh, gladsome and pure as their song. No token of man's busy life yet in the air; the birds had it. Only over Shahweetah valley, and from Mr. Underhill's chimney on the other side of the river, and from Sam Doolittle's in the bay, thin wreaths of blue smoke slowly went up, telling that there, -- and there, -- and there, -- man was getting ready for his day's work, and woman had begun hers! Only those, and the soft stroke of Winthrop's oars; but to Elizabeth that seemed only play. She sat perfectly still, her eye varying from their regular dip to the sunny rocks of the headland, to the coloured mountain heads, the trees, the river, the curling smoke, -- and back again to the oars; with a grave, intent, deep notice-taking. The water was neither for nor against them now; and with its light load and its good oars the boat flew. Diver's Rock was passed; then they got out of the sunshine into the cool shadow of the eastern shore below the bay, and fell down the river fast to the mill. Not a word was spoken by anybody till they got there.

Nor then by Elizabeth, till she saw Mr. Cowslip and Winthrop bringing her trunks and boxes to the boat-side.

"Hollo! you've got live cargo too, Governor," said the old miller. "That aint fair, -- Mornin'! -- The box is safe."

"Are you going to put those things in here?" said Elizabeth.

"Sartain," said Mr. Cowslip; -- "book-box and all."

"But they'll be too much for the boat?"

"Not at all," said Winthrop; "it was only because the tide was so low last night -- there wasn't water enough in the bay. I am not going in the bay this morning."

"No," said Mr. Cowslip, -- "tide's just settin' up along shore -- you can keep along the edge of the flats."

"You have load enough without them. Don't put 'em in here, sir!" Elizabeth exclaimed; -- "let them go in the other boat -- your boat -- you said you had a boat -- it's at home now, isn't it?"

"Sartain," said Mr. Cowslip, "it's to hum, so it can start off again as soon as you like. My boy Hild can fetch up the things for you -- if you think it's worth while to have it cost you a dollar."

"I don't care what it costs," said Elizabeth. "Send 'em up right away, and I'll pay for it."

So Winthrop dropped into his place again, and lightly and swiftly as before the boat went on her way back towards the blue smoke that curled up over Shahweetah; and Elizabeth's eyes again roved silently and enjoyingly from one thing to another. But they returned oftener to the oars, and rested there, and at last when they were about half way home, she said,

"I want to learn how to manage an oar -- will you let me take one and try?"

Winthrop helped her to change her seat and put an oar into her hand, and gave her directions. The first attempts took effect upon nothing but Asahel's face, which gave witness to his amusement; and perhaps Winthrop's dress, which was largely splashed in the course of a few minutes. But Elizabeth did not seem to heed or care for either; she was intent upon the great problem of making her oar feel the water; and as gravely, if not quite so coolly, as Winthrop's instructions were delivered, she worked at her oar to follow them. A few random strokes, which did not seem to discriminate very justly between water and air, and then her oar had got hold of the water and was telling, though irregularly and fitfully, upon the boat. The difficulty was mastered; and she pulled with might and main for half the rest of the way home; Winthrop having nothing to do with his one oar but to keep the two sides of the boat together, till her arm was tired.

"Next time I'll take both oars," she said with a face of great satisfaction as she put herself back in her old seat. Asahel thought it would cure her of wearing pale cheeks, but he did not venture to make any remark.

Rose was waiting for them, sitting crouched discontentedly on the rocks.

"It's eight o'clock!" -- said she, -- "and I'm as hungry as a bear!"

"So am I," said Elizabeth springing ashore.

"What have you been doing? -- keeping breakfast waiting this age?"

"I never saw any thing so delicious in all my life," said Elizabeth emphatically, before condescending to say what.

"I shall tell Mr. Haye you are beginning a flirtation already," whispered Miss Cadwallader laughing as they went up to the house.

But the cheek of the other at that became like a thunder- cloud. She turned her back upon her cousin and walked from her to the house, with a step as fine and firm as that of the Belvidere Apollo and a figure like a young pine tree. Rufus, who met her at the door, was astounded with a salutation such as a queen might bestow on a discarded courtier; but by the time the little lady came to the table she had got back her usual air.

"Well, how do you like boating before breakfast?" said Mr Landholm.

"Very much," Elizabeth said.

"I don't like it very much," said he, "for I ought to have mowed half an acre by this time, instead of being here at my bread and butter."

"It was not my fault, sir."

"No, no; it's all right, I am glad you went. I should have taken my breakfast and been off, long ago; but I waited out of pure civility to you, to see how you did. 'Pon my word, I think you have gained half a pound of flesh already."

"She looks a great deal better," said Asahel.

Elizabeth laughed a little, but entered into no discussion of the subject.

After breakfast the trunks arrived and the young ladies were busy; and two or three days passed quietly in getting wonted.

"Mr. Landholm," said Miss Cadwallader, a few mornings after, "will you do one thing for me?"

"A great many, Miss Rose," he said, stopping with his hands on his knees as he was about to leave the table, and looking at her attentively.

"I want you to send somebody to shew me where the strawberries are."

"Strawberries! Do you want to go and pick strawberries?"

"To be sure I do. That's what I came here for."

"Strawberries, eh," said Mr. Landholm. "Well, I guess you'll have to wait a little. There aint a soul that can go with you this morning. Besides, I don't believe there are any ripe yet."

"O yes there are, papa!" said Asahel.

"I guess Bright Spot's full of them," said Mrs. Landholm.

"Bright Spot!" said the farmer. "Well, we must be all off to the hay-field. You see, there's some grass, Miss Rose, standing ready to be cut, that can't wait; so you'll have to."

"What if it wasn't cut?" said Miss Cadwallader pouting.

"What if it wasn't cut! -- then the cattle would have nothing to eat next winter, and that would be worse than your wanting strawberries. No -- I'll tell you, -- It'll be a fine afternoon; and you keep yourself quiet, out of the sun, till it gets towards evening; and I'll contrive to spare one of the boys to go with you. The strawberries will be all the riper, and you can get as many as you want in an hour or two."

So upon that the party scattered, and the house was deserted to the 'women-folks;' with the exception of little Asahel; and even he was despatched in a few hours to the field with the dinner of his father and brothers. The girls betook themselves to their room, and wore out the long day as they could.

It grew to the tempting time of the afternoon.

"Here they are!" said Rose who sat at the east window. "Now for it! That farmer is a very good man. I really didn't expect it."

"They?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes -- both the 'boys,' as the farmer calls them."

"I should think one might have been enough," said Elizabeth.

"Well, there's no harm in having two. Isn't the eldest one handsome?"

"I don't know."

"You do know."

"I don't! for I haven't thought about it."

"Do you have to think before you can tell whether a person is handsome?"

"Yes; -- before I can tell whether I think he is."

"Well, look at him, -- I tell you he has the most splendid eyes."

"Rose Cadwallader!" said her cousin laying down her book, "what is it to you or me if all the farmer's sons in the land have splendid eyes?"

Elizabeth's eyebrows said it was very little to her.

"I like to look at a handsome face anywhere," said Rose pouting. "Come -- will you."

Elizabeth did come, but with a very uncompromising set of the said eyebrows.

It appeared that everybody was going strawberrying, except Mrs. Landholm and Winthrop; at least the former had not her bonnet on, and the latter was not in the company at all. The children found this out and raised a cry of dismay, which was changed into a cry of entreaty as Winthrop came in. Winthrop was going after fish. But Winifred got hold of his hand, and Asahel withstood him with arguments; and at last Mrs. Landholm put in her gentle word, that strawberries would de just as well as fish, and better. So Winthrop put up his fishing-rod and shouldered the oars, and armed with baskets of all sizes the whole party trooped after him.

In the boat Elizabeth might have had a good opportunity to act upon her cousin's request; for Rufus sat in the stern with them and talked, while Winthrop handled the oars. But Rufus and her cousin had the talk all to themselves; Elizabeth held off from it, and gave her eyes to nothing but the river and the hills.

They crossed the river, going a little up, to a tiny green valley just at the water's edge. On every side but the river it was sheltered and shut in by woody walls nigh two hundred feet in height. The bottom of the valley was a fine greensward, only sprinkled with trees; while from the edge of it the virgin forest rose steeply to the first height, and then following the broken ground stretched away up to the top of the neighbouring mountains. From the valley bottom, however, nothing of these could be seen; nothing was to be seen but its own leafy walls and the blue sky above them.

"Is this the place where we are to find strawberries?" said Miss Cadwallader.

"This is the place," said Rufus; "this is Bright Spot, from time out of mind the place for strawberries; nobody ever comes here but to pick them. The vines cover the ground."

"The sun won't be on it long," said Elizabeth; "I don't see why you call it Bright Spot."

"You won't often see a brighter spot when the sun is on it," said Winthrop. "It gets in the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o once in a while."

"The grass is kept very fresh here," said Rufus. "But the strawberry vines are all over in it."

So it was proved. The valley was not a smooth level as it had looked from the river, but broken into little waves and hollows of ground; in parts, near the woods, a good deal strewn with loose rocks and grown with low clumpy bushes of different species of cornus, and buckthorn, and sweetbriar. In these nooks and hollows, and indeed over the whole surface of the ground the vines ran thick, and the berries, huge, rich and rare, pretended to hide themselves, while the whole air was alive with their sweetness.

The party landed and scattered with cries of delight far and near over the valley. Even Elizabeth's composure gave way. For a little while they did nothing but scatter; to sit still and pick was impossible; for the novelty and richness of the store seemed made for the eye as much as for anything else, and be the berries never so red in one place they seemed redder in another. Winthrop and Asahel, however, were soon steadily at work, and then little Winifred; and after a time Miss Cadwallader found that the berries were good for more than to look at, and Rufus had less trouble to keep in her neighbourhood. But it was a good while before Elizabeth began to pick either for lip or basket; she stood on the viney knolls, and looked, and smelled the air, and searched with her eye the openings in the luxuriant foliage that walled in the valley. At last, making a review of the living members of the picture, the young lady bethought herself, and set to work with great steadiness to cover the bottom of her basket.

In the course of this business, moving hither and thither as the bunches of red fruit tempted her, and without raising an eye beyond them, she was picking close to one of the parties before she knew whom she was near; and as they were in like ignorance she heard Asahel say,

"I wish Rufus would pick -- he does nothing but eat, ever since he came; he and Miss Rose."

"You don't expect her to pick for you, do you?" said Winthrop.

"She might just as well as for me to pick for her," said Asahel.

"Do you think we'll get enough for mamma, Governor?" said little Winifred in a very sweet, and a little anxious, voice.

"We'll try," said her brother.

"O you've got a great parcel! -- but I have only so many, -- Governor?"

"There's more where those came from, Winnie."

"Here are some to help," said Elizabeth coming up and emptying her own strawberries into the little girl's basket. Winifred looked down at the fresh supply and up into the young lady's face, and then gave her an "Oh thank you!" of such frank pleasure and astonishment that Elizabeth's energies were at once nerved. But first of all she went to see what Miss Cadwallader was about.

Miss Cadwallader was squatting in a nest of strawberries, with red finger-ends.

"Rose -- how many have you picked?"

"I haven't the least idea. Aren't they splendid?"

"Haven't you any in your basket?"

"Basket? -- no, -- where is my basket?" said she looking round. "No, to be sure I haven't. I don't want any basket."

"Why don't you help?"

"Help? I've been helping myself, till I'm tired. Come here and sit down, Bess. Aren't they splendid? Don't you want to rest?"

"No."

Miss Rose, however, quitted the strawberries and placed herself on a rock.

"Where's my helper? -- O yonder, -- somebody's got hold of him. Lizzie, -- who'd have thought we should be so well off for beaux here in the mountains?"

The other's brow and lip changed, but she stood silent.

"They don't act like farmer's sons, do they? I never should have guessed it if I had seen them anywhere else. Look, Lizzie, -- now isn't he handsome? I never saw such eyes."

Elizabeth did not look, but she spoke, and the words lacked no point that lips could give them.

"I am thankful, Rose, that my head does not run upon the things that yours does!"

"What does yours run upon then?" said Rose pouting. "The other one, I suppose. That's the one you were helping with your strawberries just now. I dont think it is the wisest thing Mr. Haye has ever done, to send you and me here; -- it's a pity there wasn't somebody to warn him."

"Rose!" -- said the other, and her eyes seemed to lighten, one to the other, as she spoke, -- "you know I don't like such talk -- I detest and despise it! -- it is utterly beneath me. You may indulge in all the nonsense you please, and descend to what you please; -- but please to understand, I will not hear it."

Miss Cadwallader's eye fairly gave way under the lightning. Elizabeth's words were delivered with an intensity that kept them quiet, though with the last degree of clear utterance; and turning, as Rufus came up, she gave him a glare of her dark brown eyes that astonished him, and made off with a quick step to a part of the field where she could pick strawberries at a distance from everybody. She picked them somehow by instinct; she did not know what she was doing; her face rivalled their red bunches; and she picked with a kind of fury. That being the only way she had of venting her indignation, she threw it into her basket along with the strawberries. She hadn't worked so hard the whole afternoon. She edged away from the rest towards a wild corner, where amid rocks and bushes the strawberry vines spread rich and rank and the berries were larger and finer than any she had seen. She was determined to have a fine basketful for Winifred.

But she was unused to such stooping and steady work, and as she cooled down she grew very tired. She was in a rough grown place and she mounted on a rock and stood up to rest herself and look.

Pretty -- pretty, it was. It was almost time to go home, for the sun was out of their strawberry patch and the woody walls were a few shades deeper coloured than they had been; while over the river, on the other side, the steep rocks of the home point sent back a warm glow yet. The hills beyond them stood in the sun, and in close contrast was the little deep green patch of fore-ground, lit up with the white or the gay dresses of the strawberry pickers. The sweet river, a bit of it, in the middle of the picture, half in sunshine, half in shade. It was like a little nest of fairy-land; so laughed the sunshine, so dwelt the shade, in this spot and in that one. Elizabeth stood fast. It was bewitching to the eyes. And while she looked, the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o was creeping over the river, and now ready to take off the warm browns of the rocky point.

She was thinking it was bewitching, and drinking it in, when she felt two hands clasp her by the waist, and suddenly, swiftly, without a word of warning, she was swung off, clear to another rock about two yards distant, and there set down, "all standing." In bewildered astonishment, that only waited to become indignation, she turned to see whom she was to be angry with. Nobody was near her but Winthrop, and he had disappeared behind the rock on which she had just been standing. Elizabeth was not precisely in a mood for cool judgment; she stood like an offended brood-hen, with ruffled feathers, waiting to fly at the first likely offender. The rest of the party began to draw near.

"Come Lizzie, we're going home," said her cousin.

"I am not," said Elizabeth.

"Why?"

"Because I am not ready."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing -- only I am not ready."

"The sun's out of Bright Spot now, Miss Haye," said Rufus, with a somewhat mischievous play of feature.

Elizabeth was deaf.

"Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!" exclaimed Asahel from the rock; -- "Winthrop has killed a rattlesnake!"

And Winthrop came round the bushes bringing his trophy; a large snake that counted nine rattles. They all pressed round, as near as they dared, to look and admire; all but Elizabeth, who stood on her rock and did not stir.

"Where was it? where was it?" --

"When I first saw him, he was curled up on the rock very near to Miss Haye, but he slid down among the bushes before I could catch him. We must take care when we come here now, for the mate must be somewhere."

"I'll never come here again," said Miss Cadwallader. "O come! -- let us go!"

"Did you move me?" said Elizabeth, with the air of a judge putting a query.

Winthrop looked up, and answered yes.

"Why didn't you ask me to move myself?"

"I would," said Winthrop calmly, -- "if I could have got word to the snake to keep quiet."

Elizabeth did not know precisely what to say; her cousin was looking in astonishment, and she saw the corners of Rufus's mouth twitching; she shut her lips resolutely and followed the party to the boat.

The talking and laughing was general among them on the way home, with all but her; she was thinking. She even forgot her strawberries for little Winifred, which she meant to have given her in full view of her cousin. She held her basket on her lap, and looked at the water and didn't see the sunset.

The sun's proper setting was not to be seen, for he went down far behind Wut-a-qut-o. Wut-a-qut-o's shade was all over the river and had mounted near to the top of the opposite hills; but from peak to peak of them the sunlight glittered still, and overhead the sun threw down broad remembrancers of where he was and where he had been. The low hills in the distant north were all in sunlight; as the little boat pulled over the river they were lost behind the point of Shahweetah, and the last ray was gone from the last mountain ridge in view. Cool shadows and lights were over the land, a flood of beauty overhead in the sky.

It was agreed on all hands that they had been very successful; and little Winifred openly rejoiced over the quantity they had brought home for 'mother'; but still Elizabeth did not add her store, and had nothing to say. When they got to the landing- place, she would stay on the rocks to see how the boat was made fast. Winifred ran up to the house with her basket, Miss Cadwallader went to get ready for supper, Rufus followed in her steps. Asahel and Elizabeth stayed in the sunset glow to see Winthrop finish his part of the work; and then they walked up together. Elizabeth kept her position on one side of the oars, but seemed as moody as ever, till they were about half way from the rocks; then suddenly she looked up into Winthrop's face and said,

"Thank you. I ought to have said it before."

He bowed a little and smiled, in a way that set Elizabeth a thinking. It was not like a common farmer's boy. It spoke him as quiet in his own standing as she was in hers; and yet he certainly had come home that day in his shirt sleeves, and with his mower's jacket over his arm? It was very odd.

"What was it you said that strawberry-place was in the shadow of sometimes?"

"Wut-a-qut-o?"

"What's that?"

"The big mountain over there. This was in the shadow of it a little while ago."

"What a queer name! What does it mean?"

"It is Indian. I have heard that it means, the whole name, -- 'He that catches the clouds.'"

"That is beautiful! --"

"You must be tremendously strong," she added presently, as if not satisfied that she had said enough, -- "for you lifted me as if I had been no more than a featherweight."

"You did not seem much more," he said.

"Strong! --" said Asahel --

But Elizabeth escaped from Asahel's exposition of the subject, into her room.

She had regained her good-humour, and everybody at the table said she had improved fifty per cent. since her coming to Shahweetah. Which opinion Mr. Haye confirmed when he came a day or two afterward.

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