was much of in congruity, even immediately about the mansion-house.
Although poplars had been brought from Europe to ornament the grounds,
and willows and other trees were gradually springing up nigh the
dwelling, yet many a pile of snow betrayed the presence of the stump
of a pine; and even, in one or two instances, unsightly remnants of
trees that had been partly destroyed by fire were seen rearing their
black, glistening columns twenty or thirty feet above the pure white
of the snow, These, which in the language of the country are termed
stubs, abounded in the open fields adjacent to the village, and were
accompanied, occasionally, by the ruin of a pine or a hemlock that had
been stripped of its bark, and which waved in melancholy grandeur its
naked limbs to the blast, a skeleton of its former glory. But these
and many other unpleasant additions to the view were unseen by the
delighted Elizabeth, who, as the horses moved down the side of the
mountain, saw only in gross the cluster of houses that lay like a map
at her feet; the fifty smokes that were curling from the valley to the
clouds; the frozen lake as it lay imbedded in mountains of evergreen,
with the long shadows of the pines on its white surface, lengthening
in the setting sun; the dark ribbon of water that gushed from the
outlet and was winding its way toward the distant Chesapeake—the
altered, though still remembered, scenes of her child hood.

Five years had wrought greater changes than a century would produce in
countries where time and labor have given permanency to the works of
man. To our young hunter and the Judge the scene had less novelty;
though none ever emerge from the dark forests of that mountain, and
witness the glorious scenery of that beauteous valley, as it bursts
unexpectedly upon them, without a feeling of delight. The former cast
one admiring glance from north to south, and sank his face again
beneath the folds of his coat; while the latter contemplated, with