brothers about either the
ducking or the flagellation. They spoke not but to their oxen.
Rufus's mouth was in the heroic style yet, all the way up the
hill; and the lips of the other only moved once or twice to
smile.

The day was sultry, as it had promised, and the uphill lay of
the ground made the ploughing heavy, and frequent rests of the
oxen were necessary. Little communication was held between the
ploughmen nevertheless; the day wore on, and each kept
steadily to his work and seemingly to his own thoughts. The
beautiful scene below them, which they were alternately facing
and turning their backs upon, was too well known even to delay
their attention; and for the greater part of the day probably
neither of them saw much beyond his plough and his furrow.

They were at work on a very elevated point of view, from which
the channel of the river and the high grounds on the other
side were excellently seen. Valley there was hardly any; the
up-springing walls of green started from the very border of
the broad white stream which made its way between them. They
were nowhere less than two hundred feet high; above that,
moulded in all manner of heights and hollows; sometimes
reaching up abruptly to twelve or fourteen hundred feet, and
sometimes stretching away in long gorges and gentle
declivities, -- hills grouping behind hills. In Summer all
these were a mass of living green, that the eye could hardly
arrange; under Spring's delicate marshalling every little hill
took its own place, and the soft swells of ground stood back
the one from the other, in more and more tender colouring. The
eye leapt from ridge to ridge of beauty; not green now, but in
the very point of the bursting leaf, taking what hue it
pleased the sun. It was a dainty day; and it grew more dainty
as the day drew towards its close and the lights and shadows
stretched athwart the landscape again. The sun-touched lines
and spots of the mountains now, in some places, were of a
bright orange, and the shadows between them deep neutral tint
or blue. And the river, apparently, had stopped running to
reflect.

The oxen were taking one of their rests, in the latter part of
the day, and Winthrop was sitting on the beam of his plough,
when for the first time Rufus came and joined him. He sat
down in silence and without so much as looking at his brother;
and both in that warm and weary day sat a little while quietly
looking over the water; or perhaps at the litt