shall have a better view over the wide plain, the valley, and the long,
tame ridge of hills on the other side, shutting it in like human life. It
is a landscape that never tires, though it has nothing striking about it;
and I am glad that there are no great hills to be thrusting themselves
into my thoughts, and crowding out better things. It might be desirable,
in some states of mind, to have a glimpse of water,--to have the lake that
once must have covered this green valley,--because water reflects the sky,
and so is like religion in life, the spiritual element."

"There is the brook running through it, though we do not see it," replied
Rose; "a torpid little brook, to be sure; but, as you say, it has heaven
in its bosom, like Walden Pond, or any wider one."

As they sat together on the hill-top, they could look down into Robert
Hagburn's enclosure, and they saw him, with his arm now relieved from the
sling, walking about, in a very erect manner, with a middle-aged man by
his side, to whom he seemed to be talking and explaining some matter. Even
at that distance Septimius could see that the rustic stoop and uncouthness
had somehow fallen away from Robert, and that he seemed developed.

"What has come to Robert Hagburn?" said he. "He looks like another man than
the lout I knew a few weeks ago."

"Nothing," said Rose Garfield, "except what comes to a good many young men
nowadays. He has enlisted, and is going to the war. It is a pity for his
mother."

"A great pity," said Septimius. "Mothers are greatly to be pitied all over
the country just now, and there are some even more to be pitied than the
mothers, though many of them do not know or suspect anything about their