they toiled; and then found themselves on a ridge of table-land,
stretching back for some distance along the edge of a little valley or
bottom of perfectly flat smooth pasture-ground. The valley was very
narrow, only divided into fields by fences running from side to side. The
table-land might be a hundred feet or more above the level of the bottom,
with a steep face towards it. A little way back from the edge the woods
began; between them and the brow of the hill the ground was smooth and
green, planted as if by art with flourishing young silver pines and once
in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and
some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large
boulder-stone which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the
hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a
bed of water,--all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with
very little coaxing for a piece of a gentleman's pleasure-ground. On the
opposite side of the little valley was a low rocky height, covered with
wood, now in the splendour of varied red and green and purple and brown
and gold; between, at their feet, lay the soft quiet green meadow; and off
to the left, beyond the far end of the valley, was the glory of the autumn
woods again, softened in the distance. A true October sky seemed to
pervade all, mildly blue, transparently pure, with that clearness of
atmosphere that no other month gives us; a sky that would have conferred a
patent of nobility on any landscape. The scene was certainly contracted
and nowise remarkable in any of its features, but Nature had shaken out
all her colours over the land, and drawn a veil from the sky, and breathed
through the woods and over the hill-side the very breath of health,
enjoyment, and vigour.

When they were about over-against the middle of the valley, Mr. Carleton
suddenly made a pause and stood for some minutes silently looking. His two
companions came to a halt on either side of him, one not a little pleased,