I know each lane, and every alley green,
Dingle or bushy dell of this wild wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood.
Milton.
Fleda and her grandfather had but just risen from a tolerably early
breakfast the next morning, when the two young sportsmen entered the room.
"Ha!" said Mr. Ringgan,--"I declare! you're stirring betimes. Come five
or six miles this morning a'ready. Well--that's the stuff to make
sportsmen of. Off for the woodcock, hey?--And I was to go with you and
shew you the ground.--I declare I don't know how in the world I can do it
this morning, I'm so very stiff--ten times as bad as I was yesterday. I
had a window open in my room last night, I expect that must have been the
cause. I don't see how I could have overlooked it, but I never gave it a
thought, till this morning I found myself so lame I could hardly get out
of bed.--I am very sorry, upon my word?"
"I am very sorry we must lose your company, sir," said the young
Englishman, "and for such a cause; but as to the rest!--I dare say your
directions will guide us sufficiently."
"I don't know about that," said the old gentleman. "It is pretty hard to
steer by a chart that is only laid down in the imagination. I set out once
to go in New York from one side of the city over into the other, and the
first thing I knew I found myself travelling along half a mile out of
town. I had to get in a stage and ride back and take a fresh start. Out at
the West they say when you are in the woods you can tell which is north by
the moss growing on that side of the trees; but if you're lost you'll be
pretty apt to find the moss grows on _all_ sides of the trees. I couldn't
make out any waymarks at all, in such a labyrinth of brick corners. Well,
let us see--if I tell you now it is so easy to mistake one hill for
another--Fleda, child, you put on your sun-bonnet and take these gentlemen
back to the twenty-acre lot, and from there you can tell 'em how to go so
I guess they won't mistake it."
"By no means!" said Mr. Carleton; "we cannot give her so much trouble; it
would be buying our pleasure at much too dear a rate."
"Tut, tut," said the old gentleman; "she thinks nothing of trouble, and
the walk'll do her good. She'd like to be out all day, I believe, if she
had any one to go along with, but I'm rather a stupid companion for such a
spry little pair of feet. Fleda, look here,--when they get to the lot they
can find their own way after that. You know where the place is--where your
cousin Seth shot so many woodcock last year, over in Mr. Hurlbut's
land,--when you get to the big lot you must tell these gentlemen to go
straight over the hill, not Squire Thornton's hill, but mine, at the back
of the lot,--they must go straight over it till they come to cleared land
on the other side; then they must keep along by the edge of the wood, to
the right, till they come to the brook; they must _cross the brook_, and
follow up the opposite bank, and they'll know the ground when they come to
it, or they don't deserve to. Do you understand?--now run and get your hat
for they ought to be off."
Fleda went, but neither her step nor her look shewed any great willingness
to the business.
"I am sure, Mr. Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton, "your little granddaughter
has some reason for not wishing to take such a long walk this morning.
Pray allow us to go without her."
"Pho, pho," said the old gentleman, "she wants to go."
"I guess she's skeered o' the guns," said Cynthy, happy to get a chance to
edge in a word before such company;--"it's that ails her."
"Well, well,--she must get used to it," said Mr. Ringgan. "Here she is!"
Fleda had it in her mind to whisper to him a word of hope about Mr. Jolly;
but she recollected that it was at best an uncertain hope, and that if her
grandfather's thoughts were off the subject it was better to leave them
so. She only kissed him for good-by, and went out with the two gentlemen.
As they took up their guns Mr. Carleton caught the timid shunning glance
her eye gave at them.
"Do you dislike the company of these noisy friends of ours, Miss
Fleda?" said he.
Fleda hesitated, and finally said "she didn't much like to be very near
them when they were fired."
"Put that fear away then," said he, "for they shall keep a respectful
silence so long as they have the honour to be in your company. If the
woodcock come about us as tame as quails our guns shall not be provoked to
say anything till your departure gives them leave."
Fleda smiled her thanks and set forward, privately much confirmed in her
opinion that Mr. Carleton had handsome eyes.
At a little distance from the house Fleda left the meadow for an old
apple-orchard at the left, lying on a steep side hill. Up this hill-side
they toiled; and then found themselves on a ridge of table-land,
stretching back for some distance along the edge of a little valley or
bottom of perfectly flat smooth pasture-ground. The valley was very
narrow, only divided into fields by fences running from side to side. The
table-land might be a hundred feet or more above the level of the bottom,
with a steep face towards it. A little way back from the edge the woods
began; between them and the brow of the hill the ground was smooth and
green, planted as if by art with flourishing young silver pines and once
in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and
some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large
boulder-stone which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the
hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a
bed of water,--all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with
very little coaxing for a piece of a gentleman's pleasure-ground. On the
opposite side of the little valley was a low rocky height, covered with
wood, now in the splendour of varied red and green and purple and brown
and gold; between, at their feet, lay the soft quiet green meadow; and off
to the left, beyond the far end of the valley, was the glory of the autumn
woods again, softened in the distance. A true October sky seemed to
pervade all, mildly blue, transparently pure, with that clearness of
atmosphere that no other month gives us; a sky that would have conferred a
patent of nobility on any landscape. The scene was certainly contracted
and nowise remarkable in any of its features, but Nature had shaken out
all her colours over the land, and drawn a veil from the sky, and breathed
through the woods and over the hill-side the very breath of health,
enjoyment, and vigour.
When they were about over-against the middle of the valley, Mr. Carleton
suddenly made a pause and stood for some minutes silently looking. His two
companions came to a halt on either side of him, one not a little pleased,
the other a little impatient.
"Beautiful!" Mr. Carleton said at length.
"Yes," said Fleda gravely, "I think it's a pretty place. I like it up
here."
"We sha'n't catch many woodcock among these pines," said young Rossitur.
"I wonder," said Mr. Carleton presently, "how any one should have called
these 'melancholy days.'"
"Who has?" said Rossitur.
"A countryman of yours," said his friend glancing at him. "If he had been
a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none
of the sadness of decay--none of the withering--if the tokens of old age
are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious
life--the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in
common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always dinning decay
and death into one's ears;--this speaks of Life. Instead of freezing all
one's hopes and energies, it quickens the pulse with the desire to
_do_.--'The saddest of the year'--Bryant was wrong."
"Bryant?--oh!"--said young Rossitur; "I didn't know who you were
speaking of."
"I believe, now I think of it, he was writing of a somewhat later time of
the year,--I don't know, how all this will look in November."
"I think it is very pleasant in November," said little Fleda sedately.
"Don't you know Bryant's 'Death of the Flowers,' Rossitur?" said his
friend smiling. "What have you been doing all your life?"
"Not studying the fine arts at West Point, Mr. Carleton."
"Then sit down here and let me mend that place in your education. Sit
down! and I'll give you something better than woodcock. You keep a
game-bag for thoughts, don't you?"
Mr. Rossitur wished Mr. Carleton didn't. But he sat down, however, and
listened with an unedified face; while his friend, more to please himself
it must be confessed than for any other reason, and perhaps with half a
notion to try Fleda, repeated the beautiful words. He presently saw they
were not lost upon one of his hearers; she listened intently.
"It is very pretty," said Rossitur when he had done. "I believe I have
seen it before somewhere."
"There is no 'smoky light' to day," said Fleda.
"No," said Mr. Carleton, smiling to himself. "Nothing but that could
improve the beauty of all this, Miss Fleda."
"_I_ like it better as it is," said Fleda.
"I am surprised at that," said young Rossitur. "I thought you lived
on smoke."
There was nothing in the words, but the tone was not exactly polite. Fleda
granted him neither smile nor look.
"I am glad you like it up here," she went on, gravely doing the honours
of the place. "I came this way because we shouldn't have so many fences
to climb."
"You are the best little guide possible, and I have no doubt would always
lead one the right way," said Mr. Carleton.
Again the same gentle, kind, _appreciating_ look. Fleda unconsciously drew
a step nearer. There was a certain undefined confidence established
between them.
"There's a little brook down there in spring," said she pointing to a
small grass grown water-course in the meadow, hardly discernible from the
height,--"but there's no water in it now. It runs quite full for a while
after the snow breaks up; but it dries away by June or July."
"What are those trees so beautifully tinged with red and orange?--down
there by the fence in the meadow."
"I am not woodsman enough to inform you," replied Rossitur.
"Those are maples," said Fleda, "sugar maples. The one all orange is
a hickory."
"How do you know?" said Mr. Carleton, turning to her. "By your wit
as a fairy?"
"I know by the colour," said Fleda modestly,--"and by the shape too."
"Fairy," said Mr. Rossitur, "if you have any of the stuff about you, I
wish you would knock this gentleman over the head with your wand and put
the spirit of moving into him. He is going to sit dreaming here all day."
"Not at all," said his friend springing up.--"I am ready for you--but I
want other game than woodcock just now I confess."
They walked along in silence, and had near reached the extremity of the
table-land, which towards the end of the valley descended into ground of a
lower level covered with woods; when Mr. Carleton who was a little ahead
was startled by Fleda's voice exclaiming in a tone of distress, "Oh not
the robins!"--and turning about perceived Mr. Rossitur standing still with
levelled gun and just in the act to shoot. Fleda had stopped her ears. In
the same instant Mr. Carleton had thrown up the gun, demanding of Rossitur
with a singular change of expression--"what he meant!"
"Mean?" said the young gentleman, meeting with an astonished face the
indignant fire of his companion's eyes,--"why I mean not to meddle with
other people's guns, Mr. Carleton. What do _you_ mean?"
"Nothing but to protect myself."
"Protect yourself!" said Rossitur, heating as the other cooled,--from
what, in the name of wonder?"
"Only from having my word blown away by your fire," said Carleton,
smiling. "Come, Rossitur, recollect yourself--remember our compact."
"Compact! one isn't bound to keep compacts with unearthly personages,"
said Rossitur, half sulkily and half angrily; "and besides I made none."
Mr. Carleton turned from him very coolly and walked on.
They left the table-land and the wood, entered the valley again, and
passed through a large orchard, the last of the succession of fields which
stretched along it. Beyond this orchard the ground rose suddenly, and on
the steep hill-side there had been a large plantation of Indian corn. The
corn was harvested, but the ground was still covered with numberless
little stacks of the corn-stalks. Half way up the hill stood three ancient
chestnut trees; veritable patriarchs of the nut tribe they were, and
respected and esteemed as patriarchs should be.
"There are no 'dropping nuts' to-day, either," said Fleda, to whom the
sight of her forest friends in the distance probably suggested the
thought, for she had not spoken for some time. "I suppose there hasn't
been frost enough yet."
"Why you have a good memory, Fairy," said Mr. Carleton. "Do you give the
nuts leave to fall of themselves?"
"Oh sometimes grandpa and I go a nutting," said the little girl getting
lightly over the fence,--"but we haven't been this year."
"Then it is a pleasure to come yet?"
"No," said Fleda quietly, "the trees near the house have been stripped;
and the only other nice place there is for us to go to, Mr. Didenhover let
the Shakers have the nuts. I sha'n't get any this year."
"Live in the woods and not get any nuts! that won't do, Fairy. Here are
some fine chestnuts we are coming to--what would hinder our reaping a good
harvest from them?"
"I don't think there will be any on them," said Fleda; "Mr. Didenhover has
been here lately with the men getting in the coin,--I guess they have
cleared the trees."
"Who is Mr. Didenhover?"
"He is grandpa's man."
"Why didn't you bid Mr. Didenhover let the nuts alone?"
"O he wouldn't mind if he was told," said Fleda. "He does everything just
as he has a mind to, and nobody can hinder him. Yes--they've cleared the
trees--I thought so."
"Don't you know of any other trees that are out of this Mr.
Didenhover's way?"
"Yes," said Fleda,--"I know a place where there used to be beautiful
hickory trees, and some chestnuts too, I think; but it is too far off for
grandpa, and I couldn't go there alone. This is the twenty-acre lot," said
she, looking though she did not say it, "Here I leave you."
"I am glad to hear it," said her cousin. "Now give us our directions,
Fleda, and thank you for your services."
"Stop a minute," said Mr. Carleton. "What if you and I should try to find
those same hickory trees, Miss Fleda? Will you take me with you?--or is it
too long a walk?"
"For me?--oh no!" said Fleda with a face of awakening hope; "but," she
added timidly, "you were going a shooting, sir?"
"What on earth are you thinking of, Carleton?" said young Rossitur. "Let
the nuts and Fleda alone, do!"
"By your leave, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton. "My murderous intents have
all left me, Miss Fleda,--I suppose your wand has been playing about
me--and I should like nothing better than to go with you over the hills
this morning. I have been a nutting many a time in my own woods at home,
and I want to try it for once in the New World. Will you take me?"
"O thank you, sir!" said Fleda,--"but we have passed the turning a long
way--we must go back ever so far the same way we came to get to the place
where we turn off to go up the mountain."
"I don't wish for a prettier way,--if it isn't so far as to tire
you, Fairy?"
"Oh it won't tire me!" said Fleda overjoyed.
"Carleton!" exclaimed young Kossitur. "Can you be so absurd! Lose this
splendid day for the woodcock when we may not have another while we
are here!"
"You are not a true sportsman, Mr. Rossitur," said the other coolly, "or
you would know what it is to have some sympathy with the sports of others.
But _you_ will have the day for the woodcock, and bring us home a great
many I hope. Miss Fleda, suppose we give this impatient young gentleman
his orders and despatch him."
"I thought you were more of a sportsman," said the vexed West
Pointer,--"or your sympathy would be with me."
"I tell you the sporting mania was never stronger on me," said the other
carelessly. "Something less than a rifle however will do to bring down the
game I am after. We will rendezvous at the little village over yonder,
unless I go home before you, which I think is more probable. Au revoir!"
With careless gracefulness he saluted his disconcerted companion, who
moved off with ungraceful displeasure. Fleda and Mr. Carleton then began
to follow back the road they had come, in the highest good humour both.
Her sparkling face told him with even greater emphasis than her words,
"I am so much obliged to you, sir."
"How you go over fences!" said he,--"like a sprite, as you are."
"O I have climbed a great many," said Fleda, accepting however, again with
that infallible instinct, the help which she did not need--"I shall be so
glad to get some nuts, for I thought I wasn't going to have any this year;
and it is so pleasant to have them to crack in the long winter evenings."
"You must find them long evenings indeed, I should think."
"O no we don't," said Fleda. "I didn't mean they were long in _that_ way.
Grandpa cracks the nuts, and I pick them out, and he tells me stories; and
then you know he likes to go to bed early. The evenings never seem long."
"But you are not always cracking nuts."
"O no, to be sure not; but there are plenty of other pleasant things to
do. I dare say grandpa would have bought some nuts, but I had a great deal
rather have those we get ourselves, and then the fun of getting them,
besides, is the best part."
Fleda was tramping over the ground at a furious rate.
"How many do you count upon securing to-day?" said Mr. Carleton gravely.
"I don't know," said Fleda with a business face,--"there are a good
many trees, and fine large ones, and I don't believe anybody has found
them out--they are so far out of the way; there ought to be a good
parcel of nuts."
"But," said Mr. Carleton with perfect gravity, "if we should be lucky
enough to find a supply for your winter's store, it would be too much for
you and me to bring home, Miss Fleda, unless you have a broomstick in the
service of fairydom."
"A broomstick!" said Fleda.
"Yes,--did you never hear of the man who had a broomstick that would fetch
pails of water at his bidding?"
"No," said Fleda laughing. "What a convenient broomstick! I wish we had
one. But I know what I can do, Mr. Carleton,--if there should be too many
nuts for us to bring home I can take Cynthy afterwards and get the rest of
them. Cynthy and I could go--grandpa couldn't even if he was as well as
usual, for the trees are in a hollow away over on the other side of the
mountain. It's a beautiful place."
"Well," said Mr. Carleton smiling curiously to himself, "in that case I
shall be even of more use than I had hoped. But sha'n't we want a basket,
Miss Fleda?"
"Yes indeed," said Fleda,--"a good large one--I am going to run down to
the house for it as soon as we get to the turning-off place, if you'll be
so good as to sit down and wait for me, sir,--I won't be long after it."
"No," said he; "I will walk with you and leave my gun in safe quarters.
You had better not travel so fast, or I am afraid you will never reach the
hickory trees."
Fleda smiled and said there was no danger, but she slackened her pace, and
they proceeded at a more reasonable rate till they reached the house.
Mr. Carleton would not go in, placing his gun in an outer shelter. Fleda
dashed into the kitchen, and after a few minutes' delay came out again
with a huge basket, which Mr. Carleton took from her without suffering his
inward amusement to reach his face, and a little tin pail which she kept
under her own guardianship. In vain Mr. Carleton offered to take it with
the basket or even to put it in the basket, where he shewed her it would
go very well; it must go nowhere but in Fleda's own hand.
Fleda was in restless haste till they had passed over the already twice
trodden ground and entered upon the mountain road. It was hardly a road;
in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered
how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen
leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole
surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way-marks where his saw
none, she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and
rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that
he could not help admiring. Once they came to a little brawling stream of
spring water, hardly three inches deep anywhere but making quite a wide
bed for itself in its bright way to the lowlands. Mr. Carleton was
considering how he should contrive to get his little guide over it in
safety, when quick,--over the little round stones which lifted their heads
above the surface of the water, on the tips of her toes, Fleda tripped
across before he had done thinking about it. He told her he had no doubt
now that she was a fairy and had powers of walking that did not belong to
other people. Fleda laughed, and on her little demure figure went picking
out the way always with that little tin pail hanging at her side,
like--Mr. Carleton busied himself in finding out similes for her. It
wasn't very easy.
For a long distance their way was through a thick woodland, clear of
underbrush and very pleasant walking, but permitting no look at the
distant country. They wound about, now uphill and now down, till at last
they began to ascend in good earnest; the road became better marked, and
Mr. Carleton came up with his guide again. Both were obliged to walk more
slowly. He had overcome a good deal of Fleda's reserve and she talked to
him now quite freely, without however losing the grace of a most exquisite
modesty in everything she said or did.
"What do you suppose I have been amusing myself with all this while, Miss
Fleda?" said he, after walking for some time alongside of her in silence.
"I have been trying to fancy what you looked like as you travelled on
before me with that mysterious tin pail."
"Well what _did_ I look like?" said Fleda laughing.
"Little Red Riding-Hood, the first thing, carrying her grandmother the pot
of butter."
"Ah but I haven't got any butter in this as it happens," said Fleda, "and
I hope you are not anything like the wolf, Mr. Carleton?"
"I hope not," said he laughing. "Well, then I thought you might be one of
those young ladies the fairy-stories tell of, who set out over the world
to seek their fortune. That might hold, you know, a little provision to
last for a day or two till you found it."
"No," said Fleda,--"I should never go to seek my fortune."
"Why not, pray."
"I don't think I should find it any the sooner."
Mr. Carleton looked at her and could not make up his mind! whether or not
she spoke wittingly.
"Well, but after all are we not seeking our fortune?" said he. "We
are doing something very like it. Now up here on the mountain top
perhaps we shall find only empty trees--perhaps trees with a harvest
of nuts on them."
"Yes, but that wouldn't be like finding a fortune," said Fleda;--"if we
were to come to a great heap of nuts all picked out ready for us to carry
away, _that_ would be a fortune; but now if we find the trees full we have
got to knock them down and gather them up and shuck them."
"Make our own fortunes, eh?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Well people do
say those are the sweetest nuts, I don't know how it may be. Ha! that is
fine. What an atmosphere!"
They had reached a height of the mountain that cleared them a view, and
over the tops of the trees they looked abroad to a very wide extent of
country undulating with hill and vale,--hill and valley alike far below at
their feet. Fair and rich,--the gently swelling hills, one beyond another,
in the patchwork dress of their many-coloured fields,--the gay hues of the
woodland softened and melted into a rich autumn glow,--and far away,
beyond even where this glow was sobered and lost in the distance, the
faint blue line of the Catskill; faint, but clear and distinct through the
transparent air. Such a sky!--of such etherealized purity as if made for
spirits to travel in and tempting them to rise and free themselves from
the soil; and the stillness,--like nature's hand laid upon the soul,
bidding it think. In view of all that vastness and grandeur, man's
littleness does bespeak itself. And yet, for every one, the voice of the
scene is not more humbling to pride than rousing to all that is really
noble and strong in character. Not only "What thou art,"--but "What thou
mayest be!" What place thou oughtest to fill,--what work thou hast to
do,--in this magnificent world. A very extended landscape however genial
is also sober in its effect on the mind. One seems to emerge from the
narrowness of individual existence, and take a larger view of Life as well
as of Creation.
Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt it so, for after his first expression of
pleasure he stood silently and gravely looking for a long time. Little
Fleda's eye loved it too, but she looked her fill and then sat down on a
stone to await her companion's pleasure, glancing now and then up at his
face which gave her no encouragement to interrupt him. It was gravely and
even gloomily thoughtful. He stood so long without stirring that poor
Fleda began to have sad thoughts of the possibility of gathering all the
nuts from the hickory trees, and she heaved a very gentle sigh once or
twice; but the dark blue eye which she with reason admired remained fixed
on the broad scene below, as if it were reading or trying to read there a
difficult lesson. And when at last he turned and began to go up the path
again he kept the same face, and went moodily swinging his arm up and
down, as if in disturbed thought. Fleda was too happy to be moving to care
for her companion's silence; she would have compounded for no more
conversation so they might but reach the nut trees. But before they had
got quite so far Mr. Carleton broke the silence, speaking in precisely the
same tone and manner he had used the last time.
"Look here, Fairy," said he, pointing to a small heap of chestnut burs
piled at the foot of a tree,--"here's a little fortune for you already."
"That's a squirrel!" said Fleda, looking at the place very attentively.
"There has been nobody else here. He has put them together, ready to be
carried off to his nest."
"We'll save him that trouble," said Mr. Carleton. "Little rascal! he's a
Didenhover in miniature."
"Oh no!" said Fleda; "he had as good a right to the nuts I am sure as we
have, poor fellow.--Mr. Carleton--"
Mr. Carleton was throwing the nuts into the basket. At the anxious and
undecided tone in which his name was pronounced he stopped and looked up,
at a very wistful face.
"Mightn't we leave these nuts till we come back? If we find the trees over
here full we sha'n't want them; and if we don't, these would be only a
handful--"
"And the squirrel would be disappointed?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "You
would rather we should leave them to him?"
Fleda said yes, with a relieved face, and Mr. Carleton still smiling
emptied his basket of the few nuts he had put in, and they walked on.
In a hollow, rather a deep hollow, behind the crest of the hill, as Fleda
had said, they came at last to a noble group of large hickory trees, with
one or two chestnuts standing in attendance on the outskirts. And also as
Fleda had said, or hoped, the place was so far from convenient access that
nobody had visited them; they were thick hung with fruit. If the spirit of
the game had been wanting or failing in Mr. Carleton, it must have roused
again into full life at the joyous heartiness of Fleda's exclamations. At
any rate no boy could have taken to the business better. He cut, with her
permission, a stout long pole in the woods; and swinging himself lightly
into one of the trees shewed that he was a master in the art of whipping
them. Fleda was delighted but not surprised; for from the first moment of
Mr. Carleton's proposing to go with her she bad been privately sure that
he would not prove an inactive or inefficient ally. By whatever slight
tokens she might read this, in whatsoever fine characters of the eye, or
speech, or manner, she knew it; and knew it just as well before they
reached the hickory trees as she did afterwards.
When one of the trees was well stripped the young gentleman mounted into
another, while Fleda set herself to hull and gather up the nuts under the
one first beaten. She could make but little headway however compared with
her companion; the nuts fell a great deal faster than she could put them
in her basket. The trees were heavy laden and Mr. Carleton seemed
determined to have the whole crop; from the second tree he went to the
third. Fleda was bewildered with her happiness; this was doing business in
style. She tried to calculate what the whole quantity would be, but it
went beyond her; one basketful would not take it, nor two, not three,--it
wouldn't _begin to_, Fleda said to herself. She went on hulling and
gathering with all possible industry.
After the third tree was finished Mr. Carleton threw down his pole, and
resting himself upon the ground at the foot told Fleda he would wait a few
moments before he began again. Fleda thereupon left off her work too, and
going for her little tin pail presently offered it to him temptingly
stocked with pieces of apple-pie. When he had smilingly taken one, she
next brought him a sheet of white paper with slices of young cheese.
"No, thank you," said he.
"Cheese is very good with apple-pie," said Fleda competently.
"Is it?" said he laughing. "Well--upon that--I think you would teach me a
good many things, Miss Fleda, if I were to stay here long enough."
"I wish you would stay and try, sir," said Fleda, who did not know exactly
what to make of the shade of seriousness which crossed his face. It was
gone almost instantly.
"I think anything is better eaten out in the woods than it is at home,"
said Fleda.
"Well I don't know," said her friend. "I have no doubt that is the case
with cheese and apple-pie, and especially under hickory trees which one
has been contending with pretty sharply. If a touch of your wand, Fairy,
could transform one of these shells into a goblet of Lafitte or
Amontillado we should have nothing to wish for."
'Amontillado' was Hebrew to Fleda, but 'goblet' was intelligible.
"I am sorry!" she said,--"I don't know where there is any spring up
here,--but we shall come to one going down the mountain."
"Do you know where all the springs are?"
"No, not all, I suppose," said Fleda, "but I know a good many. I have gone
about through the woods so much, and I always look for the springs."
"And who roams about through the woods with you?"
"Oh nobody but grandpa," said Fleda. "He used to be out with me a great
deal, but he can't go much now,--this year or two."
"Don't you go to school?"
"O no!" said Fleda smiling.
"Then your grandfather teaches you at home?"
"No,"--said Fleda,--"father used to teach me,--grandpa doesn't
teach me much."
"What do you do with yourself all day long?"
"O plenty of things," said Fleda, smiling again. "I read, and talk to
grandpa, and go riding, and do a great many things."
"Has your home always been here, Fairy?" said Mr. Carleton after a few
minutes' pause.
Fleda said "No sir," and there stopped; and then seeming to think that
politeness called upon her to say more, she added,
"I have lived with grandpa ever since father left me here when he was
going away among the Indians,--I used to be always with him before."
"And how long ago is that?"
"It is--four years, sir;--more, I believe. He was sick when he came back,
and we never went away from Queechy again."
Mr. Carleton looked again silently at the child, who had given him these
pieces of information with a singular grave propriety of manner, and even
as it were reluctantly.
"And what do you read, Fairy?" he said after a minute;--"stories of
fairy-land?"
"No," said Fleda, "I haven't any. We haven't a great many books--there are
only a few up in the cupboard, and the Encyclopædia; father had some
books, but they are locked up in a chest. But there is a great deal in the
Encyclopædia."
"The Encyclopædia!" said Mr. Carleton;--"what do you read in that? what
can you find to like there?"
"I like all about the insects, and birds and animals; and about
flowers,--and lives of people, and curious things. There are a great
many in it."
"And what are the other books in the cupboard, which you read?"
"There's Quentin Durward," said Fleda,--"and Rob Roy, and Guy Mannering in
two little bits of volumes; and the Knickerbocker, and the Christian's
Magazine, and an odd volume of Redgauntlet, and the Beauties of Scotland."
"And have you read all these, Miss Fleda?" said her companion, commanding
his countenance with difficulty.
"I haven't read quite all of the Christian's Magazine, nor all of the
Beauties of Scotland."
"All the rest?"
"O yes," said Fleda,--"and two or three times over. And there are three
great red volumes besides, Robertson's history of something, I believe. I
haven't read that either."
"And which of them all do you like the best?"
"I don't know," said Fleda,--"I don't know but I like to read the
Encyclopædia as well as any of them. And then I have the newspapers to
read too."
"I think, Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton a minute after, "you had
better let me take you with my mother over the sea, when we go back
again,--to Paris."
"Why, sir?"
"You know," said he half smiling, "your aunt wants you, and has engaged my
mother to bring you with her if she can."
"I know it," said Fleda. "But I am not going."
It was spoken not rudely but in a tone of quiet determination.
"Aren't you too tired, sir?" said she gently, when she saw Mr. Carleton
preparing to launch into the remaining hickory trees.
"Not I!" said he. "I am not tired till I have done, Fairy. And besides,
cheese is workingman's fare, you know, isn't it?"
"No," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think it is."
"What then?" said Mr. Carleton, stopping as he was about to spring into
the tree, and looking at her with a face of comical amusement.
"It isn't what _our_ men live on," said Fleda, demurely eying the fallen
nuts, with a head full of business.
They set both to work again with renewed energy, and rested not till the
treasures of the trees had been all brought to the ground, and as large a
portion of them as could be coaxed and shaken into Fleda's basket had been
cleared from the hulls and bestowed there. But there remained a vast
quantity. These with a good deal of labour Mr. Carleton and Fleda gathered
into a large heap in rather a sheltered place by the side of a rock, and
took what measures they might to conceal them. This was entirely at
Fleda's instance.
"You and your maid Cynthia will have to make a good many journeys, Miss
Fleda, to get all these home, unless you can muster a larger basket."
"O _that's_ nothing," said Fleda. "It will be all fun. I don't care how
many times we have to come. You are _very_ good, Mr. Carleton."
"Do you think so?" said he. "I wish I did. I wish you would make your wand
rest on me, Fairy."
"My wand?" said Fleda.
"Yes--you know your grandfather says you are a fairy and carry a wand.
What does he say that for, Miss Fleda?"
Fleda said she supposed it was because he loved her so much; but the rosy
smile with which she said it would have let her hearer, if he had needed
enlightening, far more into the secret than she was herself. And if the
simplicity in her face had not been equal to the wit, Mr. Carleton would
never have ventured the look of admiration he bestowed on her. He knew it
was safe. _Approbation_ she saw, and it made her smile the rosier; but the
admiration was a step beyond her; Fleda could make nothing of it.
They descended the mountain now with a hasty step, for the day was wearing
well on. At the spot where he had stood so long when they went up, Mr.
Carleton paused again for a minute. In mountain scenery every hour makes a
change. The sun was lower now, the lights and shadows more strongly
contrasted, the sky of a yet calmer blue, cool and clear towards the
horizon. The scene said still the same that it had said a few hours
before, with a touch more of sadness; it seemed to whisper, "All things
have an end--thy time may not be for ever--do what thou wouldest
do--'while ye have light believe in the light that ye may be children of
the light.'"
Whether Mr. Carleton read it so or not, he stood for a minute motionless
and went down the mountain looking so grave that Fleda did not venture to
speak to him, till they reached the neighbourhood of the spring.
"What are you searching for, Miss Fleda?" said her friend.
She was making a busy quest here and there by the side of the
little stream.
"I was looking to see if I could find a mullein leaf," said Fleda.
"A mullein leaf? what do you want it for?"
"I want it--to make a drinking cup of," said Fleda, her intent bright eyes
peering keenly about in every direction.
"A mullein leaf! that is too rough; one of these golden leaves--what are
they?--will do better, won't it?"
"That is hickory," said Fleda. "No; the mullein leaf is the best because
it holds the water so nicely.--Here it is!--"
And folding up one of the largest leaves into a most artist-like cup, she
presented it to Mr. Carleton.
"For me, was all that trouble?" said he. "I don't deserve it."
"You wanted something, sir," said Fleda. "The water is very cold
and nice."
He stooped to the bright little stream and filled his rural goblet
several times.
"I never knew what it was to have a fairy for my cup-bearer before," said
he. "That was better than anything Bordeaux or Xeres ever sent forth."
He seemed to have swallowed his seriousness, or thrown it away with the
mullein leaf. It was quite gone.
"This is the best spring in all grandpa's ground," said Fleda. "The water
is as good as can be."
"How came you to be such a wood and water spirit? you must live out of
doors. Do the trees ever talk to you? I sometimes think they do to me."
"I don't know--I think _I_ talk to _them_," said Fleda.
"It's the same thing," said her companion smiling. "Such beautiful woods!"
"Were you never in the country before in the fall, sir?"
"Not here--in my own country often enough--but the woods in England do not
put on such a gay face, Miss Fleda, when they are going to be stripped of
their summer dress--they look sober upon it--the leaves wither and grow
brown and the woods have a dull russet colour. Your trees are true
Yankees--they 'never say die!'"
"Why, are the Americans more obstinate than the English?" said Fleda.
"It is difficult to compare unknown quantities," said Mr. Carleton
laughing and shaking his head. "I see you have good ears for the key-note
of patriotism."
Fleda looked a little hard at him, but he did not explain; and indeed they
were hurrying along too much for talking, leaping from stone to stone, and
running down the smooth orchard slope. When they reached the last fence,
but a little way from the house, Fleda made a resolute pause.
"Mr. Carleton--" said she.
Mr. Carleton put down his basket, and looked in some surprise at the
hesitating anxious little face that looked up at him.
"Won't you please not say anything to grandpa about my going away?"
"Why not, Fairy?" said he kindly.
"Because I don't think I ought to go."
"But may it not be possible," said he, "that your grandfather can judge
better in the matter than you can do?"
"No," said Fleda, "I don't think he can. He would do anything he thought
would be most for my happiness; but it wouldn't be for my happiness," she
said with an unsteady lip,--"I don't know what he would do if I went!"
"You think he would have no sunshine if your wand didn't touch him?" said
Mr. Carleton smiling.
"No sir," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think that,--but won't you please,
Mr. Carleton, not to speak about it?"
"But are you sure," he said, sitting down on a stone hard by and taking
one of her hands, "are you sure that you would not like to go with us? I
wish you would change your mind about it. My mother will love you very
much, and I will take the especial charge of you till we give you to your
aunt in Paris;--if the wind blows a little too rough I will always put
myself between it and you," he added smiling.
Fleda smiled faintly, but immediately begged Mr. Carleton "not to say
anything to put it into her grandfather's head."
"It must be there already, I think, Miss Fleda; but at any rate you know
my mother must perform her promise to your aunt Mrs. Rossitur; and she
would not do that without letting your grandfather know how glad she would
be to take you."
Fleda stood silent a moment, and then with a touching look of waiting
patience in her sweet face suffered Mr. Carleton to help her over the
fence; and they went home.
To Fleda's unspeakable surprise it was found to be past four o'clock, and
Cynthy had supper ready. Mr. Ringgan with great cordiality invited Mr.
Carleton to stay with them, but he could not; his mother would expect him
to dinner.
"Where is your mother?"
"At Montepoole, sir; we have been to Niagara, and came this way on our
return; partly that my mother might fulfil the promise she made Mrs.
Rossitur--to let you know, sir, with how much pleasure she will take
charge of your little granddaughter and convey her to her friends in
Paris, if you can think it best to let her go."
"Hum!--she is very kind." said Mr. Ringgan, with a look of grave and not
unmoved consideration which Fleda did not in the least like;--"How long
will you stay at Montepoole, sir?"
It might be several days, Mr. Carleton said.
"Hum--You have given up this day to Fleda, Mr. Carleton,--suppose you take
to-morrow for the game, and come here and try our country fare when you
have got through shooting?--you and young Mr. Rossitur?--and I'll think
over this question and let you know about it."
Fleda was delighted to see that her friend accepted this invitation with
apparent pleasure.
"You will be kind enough to give my respects to your mother," Mr. Ringgan
went on, "and thanks for her kind offer. I may perhaps--I don't
know--avail myself of it. If anything should bring Mrs. Carleton this way
we should like to see her. I am glad to see my friends," he said, shaking
the young gentleman's hand,--"as long as I have a house to ask 'em to!"
"That will be for many years, I trust," said Mr. Carleton respectfully,
struck with something in the old gentleman's manner.
"I don't know, sir!" said Mr. Ringgan, with again the dignified look of
trouble;--"it may not be!--I wish you good day, sir."