aid farewell to the lady in
black, with suitable recognition of her courtesy and kindness, and not
without some silent reflections on the mutability of human affairs.
Here had been a fine estate, a great family, a prosperous industry
firmly established, now fading away like smoke. But I do not believe
the lady in black will ever disappear entirely from Watermouth while
she lives; for is there not the old meeting-house, a hundred years old
(with the bees' nest in the weather-boarding), for her to watch over,
and care for, and worship in?

The young men were waiting for us below the dam. Here was a splendid
water-power running away almost idle. For the great iron forge, with
its massive stone buildings, standing (if the local tradition is
correct) on the site where the first American cannon-balls had been
cast for the Revolutionary War, and where that shrewd Rhode Islander,
Gen. Nathanael Greene, had invested some of the money he made in army
contracts, had been put out of business many years ago by the
development of iron-making in North Jersey and Pennsylvania. An attempt
was made to turn it into a wood-pulp factory; but that had failed
because the refractory yellow pine was full of hard knots that refused
to let themselves be ground into pulp. Now a feeble little saw-mill was
running from time to time in one corner of the huge edifice; and the
greater part of the river out of work was foaming and roaring in
wasteful beauty over the gates of the dam.

It was here, on the slopes of the open fields and on the dry sides of
the long embankment, that we saw the faded remnants of the beauty with
which the lupins had surrounded Watermouth a few days ago. The
innumerable plants with their delicate palmate leaves were still fresh
and vigorous; no drought can wither them even in the dryest soil, for
their roots reach down to the hidden waters. But their winged blossoms,
with which a little while since they had "blued the earth," as Thoreau
says, were now almost all gone; as if a countless flock of blue
butterflies had taken flight and vanished. Only here and there one
could see little groups of belated flowers, scraps of the coerulean
colour, like patches of deep-blue sky seen through the rents in a
drifting veil of clouds.

But the river called us away from the remembrance of the lupins to
follow the promise of the laurels. How charming was the curve of that
brown, foam-flecked stream, as it rushed swiftly down, from pool to