ght
and feeling went, broke up the conference; and the two fishers
set forth on their errand; Rufus carrying the basket and
fishing-poles, and Winthrop's shoulder bearing the oars. As
they went down in front of the house, little Winifred ran out.

"Governor, mayn't I go?"

"No!" said Rufus.

"We are going to Point Bluff, Winnie," said Winthrop stopping
to kiss her, -- "and I am afraid you would roll off on one side
while I was pulling up a fish on the other."

She stood still, and looked after her two brothers as they
went down to the water.

The house stood in a tiny little valley, a little basin in the
rocks, girdled about on all sides with low craggy heights
covered with evergreens. On all sides but one. To the south
the view opened full upon the river, a sharp angle of which
lay there in a nook like a mountain lake; its further course
hid behind a headland of the western shore; and only the bend
and a little bit before the bend could be seen from the
valley. The level spot about the house gave perhaps half an
acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the
grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held
their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted
themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in
native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar
as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should
be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet
wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by
that nature alone had to do there. Cedars, as soon as the
bottom land was cleared, stood the denizens of the soil on
every side, lifting their soft heads into the sky. Little else
was to be seen. Here and there, a little further off, the
lighter green of an oak shewed itself, or the tufts of a
yellow pine; but near at hand the cedars held the ground,
thick pyramids or cones of green, from the very soil, smooth
and tapered as if a shears had been there; but only nature had
managed it. They hid all else that they could; but the grey
rocks peeped under, and peeped through, and here and there
broke their ranks with a huge wall or ledge of granite, where
no tree could stand. The cedars had climbed round to the top
and went on again above the ledge, more mingled there with
deciduous trees, and losing the exceeding beauty of their
supremacy in the valley. In the valley it was not unshared;
for the Virginia creeper and cat-briar moun