still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of
the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker,
as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left
smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall
mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke
among them. Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy
pool in front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would
not let our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead
a foreground which was just as lovely--the level sunlight lying like
transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of
the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.

He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned
a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge's
pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
from old "Feyther Taft" in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long while,
leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little round
heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there was a
new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his supper,
came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze, willing
to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no means
excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join the
Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with the
expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not have