Chapter IV

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs -- To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music, lest it should not find An echo in another's mind. SHELLEY.

Winnie drew a breath of gratification, as the oars began to dimple the still water and the little boat rounded out from behind the wharf and headed up the river; the very same way by which Winthrop had taken Mr. Haye's two young ladies once long before. The tide was just at the turn, and Hildebrand made a straight run for the rocks.

"How pleasant it is to hear the oars again!" Winnie said. Winthrop said nothing.

Swiftly they pulled up, dappling the smooth grey water with falling drops from the oar-blades, and leaving behind them two lines of spreading wavelets that tracked the boat's way. Cowslip's Mill fell into the distance, and all that shore, as they pulled out into the middle of the river; then they drew near the old granite ridge of Diver's Rock on the other side. The sun had got so low down as that now, and the light of years ago was on the same grey bluffs and patches of wood. It was just like years ago; the trees stood where they did, ay, and the sunlight; the same shadows fell; and the river washed the broken foot of the point with, it might be, the very same little waves and eddies. And there, a mile further on, Wut-a- qut-o's high green side rose up from the water. Winnie had taken off her bonnet and sat with her head resting upon Winthrop's side or arm, her common position whenever she could get it. And she sat and looked, first at one thing and then at another, with quiet tears running and some times streaming down her face. Then the boat struck off from Diver's Rock and pushed straight over for the rocks of Shahweetah. As it neared them, the dear old trees stood forth more plainly to view, each one for itself; and the wonted footholds, on turf and stone, could be told and could be seen, apart one from the other. Poor Winnie could not look at them then, but she put her head down and sobbed her greeting to them all.

"Winnie," -- said Winthrop softly, and she felt his arm closer drawn around her, -- "you must not do that."

It mattered little what Winthrop asked Winnie to do; she never failed to obey him. She stopped crying now, and in another moment was smiling to him her delight, through the drops that held their place yet in her eyes and on her cheeks.

The little boat was shoved in to the usual place among the rocks and the passengers got out.

"What's the fare, Hild'? -- sloop and all?"

The skipper stood on the rocks and looked into the water.

"Will you let me come to you to clear me out, the first time I get into trouble?"

"Yes."

"Then we're square!" he said, preparing to jump back into his boat.

"_Then_ hasn't come," said Winthrop; "let's keep things square as we go along."

"All right," said the skipper. "Couldn't take nothin' from you the first time, Governor."

And Hildebrand after giving Winthrop's hand a shake, into which there went a sort of grateful respect which he would never have yielded to one who had laid any manner of claim to it, dropped into his seat again and pushed off. Winthrop and Winnie turned their steps slowly towards the house.

Very slowly; for each step now was what they had come for. How untravelled the road was!

"How it looks as if we didn't live here, Governor," Winnie said with half a sigh.

"Old Karen and Anderese don't come this way very often," replied her brother.

"Governor, I am very sorry it has got to be sold!"

They walked a few more steps up the rocky path in silence.

"O Governor, look at that great limb of that cedar tree -- all dragging! What a pity."

"Broken by the wind," said Winthrop.

"How beautifully the ivy hangs from that cedar -- just as it did. Dear Governor, won't you get a saw while you're here, and take off the branch and make it look nice again? -- as nice as it can; -- and there's the top of that little white pine!" --

"Winter-killed," said Winthrop.

"Won't you put it in order, as you used to do, this one time more?"

"If I can get a saw, I will, Winnie, -- or a hatchet."

"I'm sorry we can't do it but this one time more," said Winnie, with a second and a better defined sigh, as they reached the house level. "O how funny it looks, Governor! how the grass has run up! and how brown it is! But the cedars don't change, do they?"

"It is August, Winnie," was all Winthrop's remark.

The front of the house was shut up; they went round. Old Anderese was cutting wood at the back of the house; but without stopping to enlighten him, Winthrop passed on and led Winnie into the kitchen. There the kitchen fire was burning as of yore, and on the hearth before it stood Karen, stooping down to oversee her cooking breakfast. At Winthrop's voice she started and turned. She looked at them; and then came a long and prolonged "Oh! --" of most mingled and varied tone and expression; hands and eyes keeping it company.

"Karen, we have come to see you."

In perfect silence she shook the hand of each, and then sat down and threw her apron over her face. Winnie stood still and sobbed; Winthrop walked off.

"Oh, dear," said the old woman presently rising and coming up to Winnie, -- "what's made ye come to see me again? What did you come for, dear?"

The tone was wondering and caressing, and rejoicing, all in a breath. Winnie dried her eyes and answered as well as she could.

"Why we wanted to see the old place again, Karen, and to see you; and Governor thought it would do me good to be in the country a little while; and he couldn't come before, and so we have come up now to stay a few days. And we've brought things to eat, so you needn't be troubled about that."

"Ye needn't," said old Karen. "Anderese and me'd find something for you to eat, in all the wide country -- do ye think we wouldn't? And how are you, dear," said she scanning Winnie's pale face; -- "are ye ever yet any stronger?"

Winnie shook her head smiling and answered, "Not much."

"I see ye ain't. Well -- ye're the Lord's child. He'll do what he will with his own. Where did ye come from, dear?"

"Up from Mr. Cowslip's mill," said Winnie. "We came in his sloop last night."

"The sloop!" said Karen. "Why then ye haven't had anything to eat! -- and what was I thinking of! Sit down, dear -- take your own chair, till I get the other room fit for ye; and you shall have breakfast jus' so soon I can make it. Where's the Governor gone to?"

He came in; and Karen's face grew bright at the sight of him. All the while she was getting the breakfast he stood talking with her; and all the while, her old face kept the broad gleam of delight that had come into it with his entering the kitchen. With what zeal that breakfast was cooked for him; with what pleasure it was served. And while they were eating it, Karen sat in the chimney corner and looked at them, and talked.

"And isn't the place sold then, Governor?"

"Not yet, Karen -- in a few weeks it will be."

"And who's goin' to buy it?"

"I don't know."

"And ye ain't goin' fur to buy it yourself?"

"No Karen -- I am not rich enough to keep a country house."

"You had ought to have it," said Karen. "It don't belong to nobody else but you. And you don't know who's a goin' to have it, Governor?"

"I don't know."

"'Tain't likely they'll let the old woman stay in her corner, whoever they'll be," said Karen. "Well -- 'tain't fur now to the end, -- and then I'll get a better place where they won't turn me out. I wish I was there, Governor."

"'There' will be better at the end of your way, Karen, than at any other time."

"Ay -- O I know it, dear; but I get so impatient, days, -- I want to be gone. It's better waiting."

"Perhaps you'll have something yet to do for us, Karen," said Winnie.

"Ye're too fur off," said the old woman. "Karen's done all she can for ye when she's took care of ye this time. But I'll find what I have to do -- and I'll do it -- and then I'll go!" -- she said, with a curious modulation of the tones of her voice that came near some of the Methodist airs in which she delighted. "Governor'll take care o' you, Winnie; and the Lord'll take care o' him!"

Both brother and sister smiled a little at Karen's arrangement of things; but neither contradicted her.

"And how do you manage here, Karen, all alone? -- do you keep comfortable?"

"I'm comfortable, Mr. Winthrop," she said with half a smile; -- "I have lived comfortable all my life. I seem to see Mis' Landholm round now, times, jus' like she used to be; and I know we'll be soon all together again. I think o' that when I'm dreary."

She was a singular old figure, as she sat in the corner there with her head a little on one side, leaning her cheek on her finger, and with the quick change of energetic life and subdued patience in her manner.

"Don't get any dinner for us, Karen," said Winthrop as they rose from table. "We have enough for dinner in our basket."

"Ye must take it back again to Mannahatta," said Karen. "Ye'r dinner'll be ready -- roast chickens and new potatoes and huckleberry pie -- the chickens are just fat, and ye never see nicer potatoes this time o' year; and Anderese don't pick very fast, but he'll have huckleberries enough home for you to eat all the ways ye like. And milk I know ye like'm with, Governor."

"Give me the basket then, Karen, and I'll furnish the huckleberries."

"He'll do it -- Anderese'll get 'em, Mr. Winthrop, -- not you."

"Give me the basket! -- I would rather do it, Karen. Anderese has got to dig the potatoes."

"O yes, and we'll go out and spend the morning in the woods, won't we, Governor?" said his sister.

The basket and Winnie were ready together and the brother and sister struck off into the woods to the north of the house. They had to cross but a little piece of level ground and sunshine and they were under the shade of the evergreens which skirted all the home valley. The ground as soon became uneven and rocky, broken into little heights and hollows, and strewn all over with a bedding of stones, large and small; except where narrow foot-tracks or cowpaths wound along the mimic ravines or gently climbed the hilly ridges. Among these stones and sharing the soil with them, uprose the cedars, pines, hemlocks, and a pretty intermingling of deciduous trees; not of very tall or vigorous growth, for the land favoured them not, but elegant and picturesque in varied and sweet degree. That it pleased those eyes to which it had been long familiar, and long strange, was in no measure.

Leaving the beaten paths, the brother and sister turned to the right of the first little ravine they had entered, just where a large boulder crowned with a tuft of ferns marked the spot, and toiled up a very rough and steep rising. Winthrop's help was needed here to enable Winnie to keep footing at all, much more to make her way to the top. There were steep descents of ground, spread with dead pine leaves, a pretty red-brown carpeting most dainty to the eyes but very unsure to the foot; -- there were sharp turns in the rocky way, with huge granitic obstacles before and around them; -- Winnie could not keep on her feet without Winthrop's strong arm; although in many a rough pitch and steep rise of the way, young hickories and oaks lent their aid to her hand that was free. Mosses and lichens, brown and black with the summer's heat, clothed the rocks and dressed out their barrenness; green tufts of fern nodded in many a nook, and kept their greenness still; and huckleberry bushes were on every hand, in every spare place, and standing full of the unreaped black and blue harvest. And in the very path, under their feet, sprang many an unassuming little green plant, that in the Spring had lifted its head in glorious beauty with some delicate crown of a flower. A stranger would have made nothing of them; but Winnie and Winthrop knew them all, crowned or uncrowned.

"It's pretty hard getting up here, Governor -- I guess I haven't grown strong since I was here last; and these old yellow pines are so rotten I am afraid to take hold of anything -- but your hand. It's good you are sure-footed. O look at the Solomon's Seal -- don't you wish it was in flower!"

"If it was, we shouldn't have any huckleberries," said her brother.

"There's a fine parcel of them, isn't there, Winthrop? O let's stop and pick these -- there are nice ones -- and let me rest."

Winnie sat down to breathe, with her arm round the trunk of a pine tree, drinking in everything with her eyes, while that cluster of bushes was stripped of its most promising berries; and then a few steps more brought Winthrop and Winnie to the top of the height.

Greater barrenness of soil, or greater exposure to storms, or both causes together, had left this hill-top comparatively bare; and a few cedars that had lived and died there had been cut away by the axe, for firewood; making a still further clearance. But the shallow soil everywhere supported a covering of short grass or more luxuriant mosses; and enough cedars yet made good their hold of life and standing, to overshadow pretty well the whole ground; leaving the eye unchecked in its upward or downward rovings. The height was about two hundred feet above the level of the river, and seemed to stand in mid-channel, Shahweetah thrusting itself out between the north and southerly courses of the stream, and obliging it to bend for a little space at a sharp angle to the West. The north and south reaches, and the bend were all commanded by the height, together with the whole western shore and southern and south-eastern hills. To the northwest was Wut-a-qut-o, seen almost from the water's edge to the top; but the out-jutting woods of Shahweetah impinged upon the mountain's base, and cut the line of the river there to the eye. But north there was no obstruction. The low foreground of woods over which the hill-top looked, served but as a base to the picture, a setting on the hither side. Beyond it the Shatemuc rolled down from the north in uninterrupted view, the guardian hills, Wut-a-qut-o and its companions, standing on either side; and beyond them, far beyond, was the low western shore of the river sweeping round to the right, where the river made another angle, shewing its soft tints; and some faint and clear blue mountains still further off, the extreme distance of all. But what varied colouring, -- what fresh lights and shades, -- what sweet contrast of fair blue sky and fair blue river, -- the one, earth's motion; the other, heaven's rest; what deep and bright greens in the foreground, and what shadowy, faint, cloud-like, tints of those far off mountains. The soft north wind that had greeted the travellers in the early morning, was blowing yet, soft and warm; it flickered the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts with a lazy summer stir; white sails spotted the broad bosom of the Shatemuc and came down with summer gentleness from the upper reaches of the river. And here and there a cloud floated over; and now and then a locust sang his monotone; and another soft breath of the North wind said that it was August; and the grasshoppers down in the dell said yes, it was.

Winnie sat or lay down under the trees, and there Winthrop left her for a while; when he came back it was with flushed face and crisped hair and a basket full of berries. He threw himself down on the ground beside Winnie, threw his hat off on the other side, and gave her the basket. Winnie set it down again, after a word of comment, and her head took its wonted place of rest with a little smothered sigh.

"How do you feel, Winnie?" said her brother, passing his hand gently over her cheek.

"O I feel very well," said Winnie. "But Governor, I wish you could keep all this! --"

"I couldn't live here and in Mannahatta too, Winnie."

"But Governor, you don't mean always to live in Mannahatta, do you? -- and nowhere else?"

"My work is there, Winnie."

"Yes, but you can't play there, Governor."

"I don't want to play," he said gently and lightly.

"But why, Governor?" -- said Winnie, whom the remark made uneasy, she couldn't tell why; -- "why don't you want to play? why shouldn't you?"

"I feel more appetite for work."

"But you didn't use to be so," said Winnie, raising her head to look at him. "You used to like play as well as anybody, Winthrop?"

"Perhaps I do yet, Winnie, if I had a chance."

"But then what do you mean by your having more appetite for work? and not wanting to play?"

"I suppose it means no more but that the chance is wanting."

"But _why_ is it wanting, Governor?"

"Why are your Solomon's Seals not in flower?"

Winnie turned her head to look at them, and then brought it round again with the uneasiness in full force.

"But Governor! -- you don't mean to say that your life is like that?"

"Like what, Winnie?" said he with a pleasant look at her.

"Why, anything so dismal -- like the Solomon's Seals with the flower gone?"

"Are they dismal?"

"Why, no, -- but you would be, if you were like anything of that kind."

"Do I look like anything of that kind?"

"No," said Winnie, "indeed you don't, -- you never _look_ the least bit dismal in the world."

"I am not the least bit in the world, Winnie."

"I wish you had everything in the world that would give you pleasure!" she said, looking at him wistfully, with a vague unselfish consciousness that it might not all be for hers.

"That would be too much for any man's share, Winnie. You would make a Prince in a fairy tale of me."

"Well, what if I would?" said Winnie, half smiling, half sighing, and paying him all sort of leal homage in her heart's core.

"That is not commonly the lot of those who are to reign hereafter in a better kingdom."

Winnie rose up a little so that she could put both hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on forehead and cheeks; most loving kisses.

"But dear Governor, it isn't wrong for me to wish you to have both things, is it?"

"I hope not, dear Winnie. I don't think your wishes will do any mischief. But I am content to be here to-day."

"Are you? do you enjoy it?" she asked eagerly.

"Very much."

"I am so glad! I was afraid somehow you didn't -- as much as I did. But I am sorry you can't keep it, Governor. Isn't it all beautiful? I didn't know it was so delightful as it is."

And Winnie sighed her wish over again.

"You can't have your possessions in both worlds, Winnie."

"No, -- and I don't want to."

"You only wish that I could," he said smiling.

"Well, Winthrop, -- I can't help that."

"I am in better hands than yours, Winnie. Look at that shadow creeping down the mountain."

"It's from that little white cloud up there," said Winnie. "O how beautiful! --"

"You see how something that is bright enough in itself may cast a shadow," he said.

"Was that what you thought of when you told me to look at it?"

"No, -- not at that minute."

"But then we can see the cloud and we know that it is bright."

"And in the other case we _don't_ see the cloud and we know that it is bright. 'We _know_ that all things shall work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose!'"

"But Governor, what are you talking of?"

"That little cloud which is rolling away from Wut-a-qut-o."

"But what cloud is over you, or rolling away from you?"

"I thought the whole land was in shadow to you, Winnie, because I cannot buy it."

"Why no it isn't," said Winnie. "It never looked so bright to me. It never seemed near so beautiful when it was ours."

"The other land never seemed so bright and never will seem so beautiful, as when it is ours. 'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.'"

Winnie smiled a most rested, pleased, gratified smile at him; and turned to another subject.

"I wonder what's become of your old little boat, Governor -- the Merry-go-round?"

"I suppose it is lying in the barn-loft yet," he replied rather gravely.

"I wonder if it is all gone to pieces."

"I should think not. Why?"

"I was looking at the river and thinking how pleasant it would be to go out on it, if we could."

"If we can get home, Winnie, I'll see how the matter stands."

"I don't want to go home," said Winnie.

"But I want to have you. And Karen will want the huckleberries."

"Well -- I'll go," said Winnie. "But we'll come again, Governor -- won't we?"

"As often as you please. Now shall I carry you?"

"O no!"

But Winthrop presently judged of that also for himself, and taking his little sister on one arm, made his way steadily and swiftly down to the level ground.

"_You're_ a good climber," was Winnie's remark when he set her on her feet again. "And I don't know but I was once. I've almost forgotten. But it's as good to have you carry me, and to see you do it."

The Merry-go-round was found in good condition, only with her seams a little, or not a little, opened. That trouble however was got over by the help of a little caulking and submersion and time; and she floated again as lightly as ever. Some days still passed, owing to weather or other causes, before the first evening came when they went out to try her.

That evening, -- it was the seventeenth of August, and very fair, -- they went down to the rocks, just when the afternoon had grown cool in the edge of the evening. Winnie put herself in the stern of the little white boat, and Winthrop took his old place and the oars. Winnie's eyes were sparkling.

"It will be harder work to pull than it used to be," she remarked joyously, -- "you're so out of the habit of it."

Winthrop only replied by pushing the little skiff off.

"However," continued Winnie, "I guess it isn't much to pull me anywhere."

"Which way shall we go?" said Winthrop, one or two slow strokes of his oar sending the little boat forward in a way that made Winnie smile.

"I don't know -- I want to go everywhere -- Let's go up, Winthrop, and see how it looks -- Let's go over under Wut-a- qut-o. O how beautiful it is, Winthrop! --"

Winthrop said nothing, but a repetition of those leisurely strokes brought the boat swiftly past the cedars and rocks of Shahweetah's shore and then out to the middle of the river, gradually drawing nearer to the other side. But when the mid- river was gained, high enough up to be clear of the obstructing point of Shahweetah, Winnie's ecstatic cry of delight brought Winthrop's head round; and with that he lay upon his oars and looked too. He might. The mountains and the northern sky and clouds were all floating as it were in a warm flush of light -- it was upon the clouds, and through the air, and upon the mountains' sides, -- so fair, so clear, but beyond that, so rich in its glowing suffusion of beauty, that eyes and tongue were stayed, -- the one from leaving the subject, the other from touching it. Winthrop's oars lay still, the drops falling more and more slowly from the wet blades. The first word was a half awed whisper from Winnie --

"O Winthrop, -- did you ever see it look so?"

The oars dipped again, and again lay still.

"Winthrop, this isn't much like Mannahatta!" Winnie said next, under breath.

The oars dipped again, and this time to purpose. The boat began to move slowly onward.

"But Winthrop you don't say anything?" Winnie said uneasily.

"I don't know how."

"I wish I could keep a picture of that," she went on with regretful accent as her eyes turned again to the wonderful scene before them in the north, floating as it seemed in that living soft glow.

"I shall keep a picture of it," said Winthrop.

Winnie sighed her regrets again, and then resigned herself to looking with her present eyes, while the little boat moved steadily on and the view was constantly changing; till they were close under the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o, and from beneath its high green and grey precipice rising just above them, only the long sunny reach of the eastern shore remained in view. They looked at it, till the sunset began to make a change.

"O Winthrop, there is Bright Spot," said Winnie, as her head came round to the less highly coloured western shore.

"Yes," -- said Winthrop, letting the boat drop a little down from under the mountain.

"How it has grown up! -- and what are all those bushes at the water's edge?"

"Alders. Look at those clouds in the south."

There lay, crossing the whole breadth of the river, a spread of close-folded masses of cloud, the under edges of which the sun touched, making a long network of salmon or flame-coloured lines. And then above the near bright-leaved horizon of foliage that rose over Bright Spot, the western sky was brilliantly clear; flecked with little reaches of cloud stretching upwards and coloured with fairy sunlight colours, gold, purple, and rose, in a very witchery of mingling.

Winthrop pushed the boat gently out a little further from the shore, and they sat looking, hardly bearing to take their eyes from the cloud kaleidoscope above them, or to speak, the mind had so much to do at the eyes. Only a glance now and then for contrast of beauty, at the south, and to the north where two or three little masses of grey hung in the clear sky. Gently Winthrop's oars dipped from time to time, bringing them a little further from the western shore and within fuller view of the opening in the mountains. As they went, a purplish shade came upon the grey masses in the north; -- the sunlight colours over Bright Spot took richer and deeper hues of purple and red; the salmon network in the south changed for rose. And then, before they had got far, the moon's crescent, two or three days old, a glittering silver thread, hung itself out amid the bright rosy flecks of cloud in the west just hard by the mountain's brow. Winnie had to look sharp to find it.

"And there is Venus too," said Winthrop; -- "look at her."

"Where?"

"In the blue -- a little lower down than the moon; and further to the south -- do you see? --"

"That white bright star? -- O how beautiful! -- in that clear blue sky. O how bright! -- how much brighter than the moon, Winthrop?"

"Yes, -- she has a way of looking bright."

"How did you know it was Venus, or how _do_ you know?"

"Very much in the same way that I know it is Winnie. I have seen her before. I never saw those clouds before."

"Did you ever see _such_ clouds before! And how long they stay, Winthrop. O what a place!"

Slowly the little boat pulled over the river, getting further and further from Bright Spot and its bright bit of sky scenery, which faded and changed very slowly as they sailed away. They neared the high rocky point of Shahweetah, and then instead of turning down the river, kept an easterly course along the low woody shore which stretched back from the point. As they went on, and as the clouds lost their glory, the sky in the west over Wut-a-qut-o's head tinged itself with violet and grew to an opal light, the white flushing up liquidly into rosy violet, which in the northeast quarter of the horizon melted away to a clear grave blue.

"It's more beautiful than the clouds," said Winnie.

"It is a wonderful evening," said Winthrop, as he set his oars more earnestly in the water and the little boat skimmed along.

"But dear Governor, where are you going?"

"Going to land, somewhere."

"To land! But it'll be time to go home, won't it? We're a great way from there."

"We'll take a short cut home," said Winthrop, looking round for a place to execute his purpose.

"How can you?"

"Through the woods. Wouldn't you like it? You've had no exercise to-day."

"O I'd like it. But what will you do with the boat? leave her here? -- O in the Aegean sea, Winthrop!"

"That is what I am steering for," said her brother. "But I want to see the after-glow come out first."

The 'Aegean Sea' was a little bay-like cove on the north side of Shahweetah; to which a number of little rock-heads rising out of the water, or some freak of play, had long ago given its classic name. Winthrop pushed his boat to the shore there, and made her fast; and then he and Winnie waited for the after-glow. But it was long coming and the twilight grew on; and at last they left the bay and plunged into the woods. A few steps brought them to a path, which rough and untravelled as it was, their knowledge of the land enabled them easily to follow. Easily for all but their feet. Winnie's would have faltered utterly, so rough, stony, and broken it was, without her brother's strong arm; but helped and led and lifted by him, she went on joyously through the gathering gloom and under the leafy canopy that shut out all the sky and all knowledge of the after-glow, if it came. But when they had got free of the woods, and had come out upon the little open cedar field that was on the river side of Shahweetah, near home, -- there it was! Over Wut-a-qut-o's head lay a solid little long mass of cloud with its under edges close-lined with fine deep beautiful red. The opal light was all gone; the face of the heavens was all clear blue, in the gravity of twilight. Venus and the moon were there yet, almost down -- bright as ever; the moon more brilliant and bright; for now the contrast of her sharp crescent was with Wut-a-qut-o's dark shadowy side.

That was the beginning of that August boating. And often again as in old times the little skiff flew over the water, in the shadow of the mountain and the sunlight of the bay, coasting the shores, making acquaintance with the evergreens and oaks that skirted them and looked over into the water's edge. Where once Elizabeth had gone, Winthrop and Winnie with swifter and surer progress went; many an hour, in the early and the late sunbeams. For those weeks that they stayed, they lived in the beauties of the land, rather than according to old Karen's wish, on the fatness of it.

But she did her best; and when at last Winthrop must return to his business, and they bid her good bye and left her and Wut- a-qut-o once more, the old woman declared even while she was wiping the eyes that would not be dry, that their coming had "done both of 'em real good -- a power of it -- and her too."

"He hasn't his beat in _this_ country," she said to old Anderese her brother, as she was trying to take up again her wonted walk through the house. -- "And she, dear thing! ain't long for this world; but she's ready for a better."