et of it that moment!

While devouring the grapes, I looked on all sides out of the peep-holes
of my hermitage, and saw the farmhouse, the fields, and almost every
part of our domain, but not a single human figure in the landscape.
Some of the windows of the house were open, but with no more signs of
life than in a dead man's unshut eyes. The barn-door was ajar, and
swinging in the breeze. The big old dog,--he was a relic of the former
dynasty of the farm,--that hardly ever stirred out of the yard, was
nowhere to be seen. What, then, had become of all the fraternity and
sisterhood? Curious to ascertain this point, I let myself down out of
the tree, and going to the edge of the wood, was glad to perceive our
herd of cows chewing the cud or grazing not far off. I fancied, by
their manner, that two or three of them recognized me (as, indeed, they
ought, for I had milked them and been their chamberlain times without
number); but, after staring me in the face a little while, they
phlegmatically began grazing and chewing their cuds again. Then I grew
foolishly angry at so cold a reception, and flung some rotten fragments
of an old stump at these unsentimental cows.

Skirting farther round the pasture, I heard voices and much laughter
proceeding from the interior of the wood. Voices, male and feminine;
laughter, not only of fresh young throats, but the bass of grown
people, as if solemn organ-pipes should pour out airs of merriment. Not
a voice spoke, but I knew it better than my own; not a laugh, but its
cadences were familiar. The wood, in this portion of it, seemed as
full of jollity as if Comus and his crew were holding their revels in
one of its usually lonesome glades. Stealing onward as far as I durst,
without hazard of discovery, I saw a concourse of strange figures
beneath the overshadowing branches. They appeared, and vanished, and
came again, confusedly with the streaks of sunlight glimmering down
upon them.

Among them was an Indian chief, with blanket, feathers, and war-paint,
and uplifted tomahawk; and near him, looking fit to be his woodland
bride, the goddess Diana, with the crescent on her head, and attended
by our big lazy dog, in lack of any fleeter hound. Drawing an arrow
from her quiver, she let it fly at a venture, and hit the very tree
behind which I happened to be lurking. Another group consisted of a
Bavarian broom-girl, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or two
foresters of the Middle A