n
the company of great rivers: the Susquehanna, like some epic goddess,
was to lead us to the Lehigh; the Blue Mountains were to bring us to
the Delaware; and the uplands of Sullivan County were to bring us
to--the lordly gates of the Hudson.

Our chests expanded as imagination luxuriated in the pictures it made.
Our walk was only just beginning.

CHAPTER XXIV

AND UNEXPECTEDLY THE LAST

We had seen the two great rivers sweep into each other's arms in a broad
glory of sunlit water, meeting at the bosky end of a wooded promontory,
and yes! there was the Susquehanna glittering far beneath--the beautiful
name I had so often seen and wondered about, painted on the sides of
giant freight-cars! Yes, there was actually the great legendary river. It
was a very warm, almost sultry noonday, more like midsummer than
mid-October, and the river was almost blinding in its flashing beauty.
Loosening our knapsacks, we called a halt and, leaning over the railing
guarding the precipitous bank, luxuriated in the visionary scene. So
high was the bank, and so broad the river, that we seemed lifted up into
space, and the river, dreamily flowing beneath a gauze veil of heat-mist,
seemed miles below us and drowsily unreal. Its course inshore was dotted
with boulders, in the shadows of which we could see long ghostly fishes
lazily gliding, and a mud-turtle, with a trail of little ones, slowly
moving from rock to rock.

Suddenly Colin put his hand to his head, and swayed toward me, as though
he were about to faint.

"I don't know what's the matter, old man," he said, "but I think I had
better sit down a minute." And he sank by the roadside.

Unlike himself, he had been complaining of fatigue, and had seemed out of
sorts for a day or two, but we had thought nothing of it; and, after
resting a few minutes, he announced himself ready for the road again,
but he looked very pale and walked with evident weariness. As a roadside
cottage came in sight, "I wonder if they could give us a cup of tea," he
said; "that would fix me up, I'm sure." So we knocked, and the door was
opened by a pathetic shadow of an old woman, very poor and thin and
weary-looking, who, although, as we presently learned, she was at the
moment suffering from the recent loss of one eye, made us welcome and
busied herself about tea, with an unselfish kindness that touched our
hearts, and made us reflect on the angelic goodness of human
nature--sometimes.

She looked