of a
considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the
shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, with here
and there glimpses of a broad plain below, and of a broad-banded river
winding through it with many loops.

But these glimpses were rare, and a stranger could not guess the extent
of the plain until, stepping from the forest into broad day, he found
himself on the very skirts of it.

An ample plain it was; a grass ground of many thousand acres, where
fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers
laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring
launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and
wading-boots. For in winter one sheet of water--or of ice, as it might
happen--covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many
brooks that threaded their way to her. But at this season they ran low
between their banks and the eye easily traced their meanderings, while
the main stream itself rolled its waters in full view--in places three
hundred yards wide, and seldom narrower than one hundred. Dwarf willows
fringed it: at some distance back from the shore, alders and reddening
maples dotted the meadows, with oaks here and there, and everywhere wild
cranberry bushes in great moss-like hummocks.

It ran sluggishly, and always--however long the curve--up to its near or
right bank the plain lay flat, or broken only by these hummocks.
But from the farther shore the ground rose at a moderate slope, and here
were farmhouses and haystacks planted above reach of the waters.
A high ridge of forest backed this inhabited terrace, and dense forest
filled the eastward gap through which the river passed down to these
levels from the cleft hills.

At one point on the farther shore the houses had drawn together in a
cluster, and towards this the road ran in a straight line on the raised
causeway that had suffered much erosion from bygone floods. It cost the
travellers an hour to reach the river-bank, where a ferry plied to and
from the village. It was a horse-boat, but not capable of conveying the
waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in
parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay.
Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and
rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her
lodging, some two miles up the stream. The house stood bes