t poured out to
greet us. The Master, an elderly, placid, comfortable man, gave me just
the welcome that had been promised in his name. The supper was waiting,
and the evening passed in such happy cheer that the bewilderments and
misgivings of the twilight melted away, and at bedtime I dropped into
the nest of sleep as one who has found a shelter among friends.

II

The Hilltop School stood on a blessed site. Lifted high above the
village, it held the crest of the last gentle wave of the mountains
that filled the south with crowding billows, ragged and tumultuous.
Northward, the great plain lay at our feet, smiling in the sun; meadows
and groves, yellow fields of harvest and green orchards, white roads and
clustering towns, with here and there a little city on the bank of
the mighty river which curved in a vast line of beauty toward the blue
Catskill Range, fifty miles away. Lines of filmy smoke, like vanishing
footprints in the air, marked the passage of railway trains across
the landscape--their swift flight reduced by distance to a leisurely
transition. The bright surface of the stream was furrowed by a hundred
vessels; tiny rowboats creeping from shore to shore; knots of black
barges following the lead of puffing tugs; sloops with languid motion
tacking against the tide; white steamboats, like huge toy-houses,
crowded with pygmy inhabitants, moving smoothly on their way to the
great city, and disappearing suddenly as they turned into the narrows
between Storm-King and the Fishkill Mountains. Down there was life,
incessant, varied, restless, intricate, many-coloured--down there was
history, the highway of ancient voyagers since the days of Hendrik
Hudson, the hunting-ground of Indian tribes, the scenes of massacre and
battle, the last camp of the Army of the Revolution, the Head-quarters
of Washington--down there were the homes of legend and poetry, the
dreamlike hills of Rip van Winkle's sleep, the cliffs and caves haunted
by the Culprit Fay, the solitudes traversed by the Spy--all outspread
before us, and visible as in a Claude Lorraine glass, in the tranquil
lucidity of distance. And here, on the hilltop, was our own life;
secluded, yet never separated from the other life; looking down upon
it, yet woven of the same stuff; peaceful in circumstance, yet ever busy
with its own tasks, and holding in its quiet heart all the elements of
joy and sorrow and tragic consequence.

The Master was a man of most unwor