The winter was a long one to the separated family. Quietly won through, and busily. The father in the distant legislature; the brother away at his studies; and the two or three lonely people at home; - each in his place was earnestly and constantly at work. No doubt Mr. Landholm had more time to play than the rest of them, and his business cares did not press quite so heavily; for he wrote home of gay dinings-out, and familiar intercourse with this and that member of the Senate and Assembly, and hospitable houses that were open to him in Vantassel, where he had pleasant friends and pleasant times. But the home cares were upon him even then; he told how he longed for the Session to be over, that he might be with his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel, and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on dressing the flax. And Winthrop, through the long winter, had taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a little calmer, not a whit the less strong.

He filled father's and brother's place - his mother knew how well. Sam Doolittle knew, for he declared "there wa'n't a stake in the fences that wa'n't looked after, as smart as if the old chap was to hum." The grain was threshed as duly as ever, though a boy of sixteen had to stand in the shoes of a man of forty. Perhaps Sam and Anderese wrought better than their wont, in shame or in admiration. Karen never had so good a woodpile, Mrs. Landholm's meal bags were never better looked after; and little Winifred and Asahel never wanted their rides in the snow, nor had more nuts cracked o' nights; though they had only one tired brother at home instead of two fresh ones. Truth to tell, however, one ride from Winthrop would at any time content them better than two rides from Will. Winthrop never allowed that he was tired, and never seemed so; but his mother and Karen were resolved that tired he must be.

"He had pretty strength to begin with," Karen said; "that was a good thing; and he seemed to keep it up too; he was shootin' over everything."

If Winthrop kept his old plans of self-aggrandizement, it was at the bottom of his heart; he looked and acted nothing but the farmer, all those months. There was a little visit from Rufus too, at mid-winter, which must have wakened the spirit of other things, if it had been at all laid to sleep. But if it waked it kept still. It did not so much as shew itself. Unless indirectly.

"What have you been doing all to-day, Governor?" said his little sister, meeting him with joyful arms as he came in one dark February evening.

"What have you been about all day?" said her brother, taking her up to his shoulder. "Cold isn't it? Have you got some supper for me?"

"No, I hav'n't, -" said the little girl. "Mamma! - Governor wants his supper!"

"Hush, hush. Governor's not in a hurry."

"Where have you been all day?" she repeated, putting her little hand upon his cold face with a sort of tender consideration.

"In the snow, and out of it."

"What were you doing in the snow?"

"Walking."

"Was it cold?"

"Stinging."

"What was stinging?"

"Why, the cold!"

She laughed a little, and went on stroking his face.

"What were you doing when you wa'n't in the snow?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Tell me!"

"I was scutching flax."

"What is that?"

"Why, don't you know? - didn't you see me beating flax in the barn the other day? - beating it upon a board, with a bat? - that was scutching."

"That day when mamma said, - mamma said, you were working too hard?"

"I think it is very likely."

"I thought we were done dressing flax?" remarked Asahel.

"We! - well, I suppose you have, for this season."

"Well, ain't you done dressing flax?"

"No, sir."

"I thought you said the flax was all done, Winthrop?" said his mother.

"My father's is all done, ma'am."

"And yet you have been dressing flax to-day?" said Asahel; while his mother looked.

"Mamma," said Winthrop, "I wish Asahel was a little older. -

He would be a help."

"Who have you been working for?" said the child.

"For myself."

"Where have you been, Winthrop?" said his mother in a lower tone of inquiry.

"I have been over the mountain, mamma, - to Mr. Upshur's."

"Dressing flax?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you have come over the mountain to-night?"

"Yes, mother."

She stooped in silence to the fire to take up her tea-pot; but

Asahel exclaimed,

"It ain't right, mamma, is it, for Winthrop to be dressing flax for anybody else?"

"What's the wrong?" said his brother.

"Is it, mamma?"

But mamma was silent.

"What's the wrong?" repeated Winthrop.

"Because you ought to be doing your own business."

"Never did, if I didn't to-day," Winthrop remarked as he came to the table.

"For shame Asahel!" put in little Winifred with her childish voice; - "you don't know. Governor always is right."

It was a very cold February, and it was a very bleak walk over the mountain; but Winthrop took it many a time. His mother now and then said when she saw him come in or go out, "Don't overtry yourself, my son! -" but he answered her always with his usual composure, or with one of those deep breaking-up looks which acknowledged only her care - not the need for it. As Karen said, "he had a pretty strength to begin with;" and it was so well begun that all the exposure and hardship served rather to its development and maturing.

The snow melted from off the hills, and the winter blasts came more fitfully, and were changed for soft south airs between times. There was an end to dressing flax. The spring work was opening; and Winthrop had enough to do without working on his own score. Then Mr. Landholm came home; and the energies of both the one and the other were fully taxed, at the plough and the harrow, in the barnyard and in the forest, where in all the want of Rufus made a great gap. Mrs. Landholm had more reason now to distress herself, and distressed herself accordingly, but it was of no use. Winthrop wrought early and late, and threw himself into the gap with a desperate ardour that meant - his mother knew what.

They all wrought cheerfully and with good heart, for they were together again; and the missing one was only thought of as a stimulus to exertion, or its reward. Letters came from Rufus, which were read and read, and though not much talked about, secretly served the whole family for dessert at their dinner and for sweetmeats to their tea. Letters which shewed that the father's end was gaining, that the son's purpose was accomplishing; Rufus would be a man! They were not very frequent, for they avoided the post-office to save expense, and came by a chance hand now and then; - "Favoured by Mr. Upshur," - or, "By Uncle Absalom." They were written on great uncouth sheets of letter-paper, yellow and coarse; but the handwriting grew bold and firm, and the words and the thoughts were changing faster yet, from the rude and narrow mind of the boy, to the polish and the spread of knowledge. Perhaps the letters might be boyish yet, in another contrast; but the home circle could not see it; and if they could, certainly the change already made was so swift as shewed a great readiness for more. Mr. Landholm said little about these letters; read them sometimes to Mr. Upshur, read them many times to himself; and for his family, his face at those times was comment enough.

"Well! -" he said one day, as he folded up one of the uncouth great sheets and laid it on the table, - "the man that could write that, was never made to hoe corn - that's certain."

Winthrop heard it.

At midsummer Rufus came home for a little. He brought news. He had got into the good graces of an uncle, a brother of his father's, who lived at Little River, a town in the interior, forty miles off. This gentleman, himself a farmer extremely well to do in the world, and with a small family, had invited Rufus to come to his house and carry on his studies there. The invitation was pressed, and accepted, as it would be the means of a great saving of outlay; and Rufus came home in the interval to see them all, and refit himself for the winter campaign.

No doubt he was changed and improved, like his letters; and fond eyes said that fond hopes had not been mistaken. If they looked on him once with pride, they did now with a sort of insensible wonder. His whole air was that of a different nature, not at all from affectation, but by the necessity of the case; and as noble and graceful as nature intended him to be, they delightedly confessed that he was. Perhaps by the same necessity, his view of things was altered a little, as their view of him; a little unconscious change, it might be; that nobody quarrelled with except the children; but certain it is that Winifred did not draw up to him, and Asahel stood in great doubt.

"Mamma," said he one day, "I wish Rufus would pull off his fine clothes and help Winthrop."

"Fine clothes, my dear!" said his mother; "I don't think your brother's clothes are very fine; I wish they were finer. Do you call patches fine?"

"But anyhow they are better than Winthrop's?"

"Certainly - when Winthrop is at his work."

"Well, the other day he said they were too good for him to help Winthrop load the cart; and I think he should pull them off!"

"Did Winthrop ask him?"

"No; but he knew he was going to do it."

"Rufus must take care of his clothes, or he wouldn't be fit to go to Little River, you know."

"Then he ought to take them off," said Asahel.

"He did cut wood with Winthrop all yesterday."

Asahel sat still in the corner, looking uncomfortable.

"Where are they now, mamma?"

"Here they are," said Mrs. Landholm, as Rufus and Winthrop opened the door.

The former met both pair of eyes directed to him, and instantly asked,

"What are you talking of?"

"Asahel don't understand why you are not more of a farmer, when you are in a farmhouse."

"Asahel had better mind his own business," was the somewhat sharp retort; and Rufus pulled a lock of the little boy's hair in a manner to convey a very decided notion of his judgment. Asahel, resenting this handling, or touched by it, slipped off his chair and took himself out of the room.

"He thinks you ought to take off your fine clothes and help Winthrop more than you do," said his mother, going on with a shirt she was ironing.

"Fine clothes!" said the other with a very expressive breath, - "I shall feel fine when I get that on, mother. Is that mine?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't Karen do that?"

"No," said Mrs. Landholm, as she put down her iron and took a hot one. The tone said, "Yes - but not well enough."

He stood watching her neat work.

"I am ashamed of myself, mother, when I look at you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't deserve to have you do this for me."

She looked up and gave him one of her grave clear glances, and said,

"Will you deserve it, Will?"

He stood with full eyes and hushed tongue by her table, for the space of five minutes. Then spoke with a change of tone.

"Well, I'm going down to help Winthrop catch some fish for supper; and you sha'n't cook 'em, mamma, nor Karen neither. Karen's cooking is not perfection. By the by, there's one thing more I do want, - and confoundedly too, - a pair of boots; - I really don't know how to do without them."

"Boots?" - said his mother, in an accent that sounded a little dismayful.

"Yes. - I can get capital ones at Asphodel - really stylish ones - for five dollars; - boots that would last me handsome a great while; and that's a third less than I should have to give anywhere else, - for such boots. You see I shall want them at Little River - I shall be thrown more in the way of seeing people - there's a great deal of society there. I don't see that I can get along without them."

His mother was going on with her ironing.

"I don't know," she said, as her iron made passes up and down,

- "I don't know whether you can have them or not."

"I know," said Winthrop. "But I don't see the sense of getting them at Asphodel."

"Because I tell you they are two dollars and a half cheaper."

"And how much more will it cost you to go round by the way of

Asphodel than to go straight to Little River?"

"I don't know," said the other, half careless, half displeased; - "I really haven't calculated."

"Well, if you can get them for five dollars," said Winthrop, "you shall have them. I can lend you so much as that."

"How did you come by it?" said his brother looking at him curiously.

"I didn't come by it at all."

"Where did it come from?"

"Made it."

"How?"

"What do you want to know for? I beat it out of some raw flax."

"And carried it over the mountain, through the snow, winter nights," added his mother.

"You didn't know you were doing it for me," Rufus said laughing as he took the money his brother handed him. But it was a laugh assumed to hide some feeling. "Well, it shall get back to you again somehow, Winthrop. Come - are we ready for this piscatory excursion?"

"For what?" said his mother.

"A Latin word, my dear mother, which I lately picked up somewhere."

"Why not use English?" said his mother.

A general little laugh, to which many an unexpressed thought 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 mounted and flung their arms about them, and the wild grape-vines took wild possession; and in the day of their glory they challenged the bystander to admire anything without them. But the day of their glory was not now; it came when Autumn called them to shew themselves; and Autumn's messenger was far off. The cedars had it, and the roses, and the eglantine, under Summer's rule.

It was in the prime of summer when the two fishers went down to their boat. The valley level was but a few feet above the river; on that side, with a more scattering growth of cedars, the rocks and the greensward gently let themselves down to the edge of the water. The little dory was moored between two uprising heads of granite just off the shore. Stepping from rock to rock the brothers reached her. Rufus placed himself in the stern with the fishing tackle, and Winthrop pushed off.

There was not a stir in the air; there was not a ripple on the water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it. Still - still, - surely it was Summer's siesta; the very birds were still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer's day. The very air seemed blue - blue against the mountains, and kept back the sun's fierceness with its light shield; and even the eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under the same blue.

No distant landscape was to be seen, until they had rowed for several minutes. Winthrop had turned to the north and was coasting the promontory edge, which in that direction stretched along for more than a quarter of a mile. It stretched west as well as north, and the river's course beyond it was in a north-easterly line; so that keeping close under the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the point was turned. First they passed the rock-bound shore which fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the river, cut in two by a small belt of woods. These acres were not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the ground there rising fast to a very bluff and precipitous range which ended the promontory, and pushed the river boldly into a curve, as abrupt almost as the one it took in an opposite direction a quarter of a mile below. Here the shore was bold and beautiful. The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall; sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock. It was all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the other shore was unfolding itself. One huge mountain had been all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing, except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with blue, and only the nearer highlands shewed under the mask their fine outlines, and the Shatemuc its smooth face.

At the point of the promontory the rocky wall broke down to a low easy shore, which stretched off easterly in a straight line for half a mile, to the bottom of what was called the north bay. Just beyond the point, a rounded mass of granite pushed itself into the water out of reach of the trees and shewed itself summer and winter barefacedly. This rock was known at certain states of the tide to be in the way of the white mackerel. Winthrop made fast his little skiff between it and the shore, and climbing upon the rock, he and Rufus sat down and fell to work; for to play they had not come hither, but to catch their supper.

The spirit of silence seemed to have possessed them both, for with very few words they left the boat and took their places, and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited and the lines thrown. Profound stillness - and then the flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching after the bait-basket - and then all was still again. The lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers wandered off to the distant blue, and then came back to their bobbing corks. Thinking, both the young men undoubtedly were, for it could not have been the mackerel that called such grave contemplation into their faces.

"It's confoundedly hot!" said Rufus at length very expressively.

His brother seemed amused.

"What are you laughing at?" said Rufus a little sharply.

"Nothing - I was thinking you had been in the shade lately.

We've got 'most enough, I guess."

"Shade! - I wish there was such a thing. This is a pretty place though, if it wasn't August, - and if one was doing anything but sitting on a rock fishing."

"Isn't it better than Asphodel?" said Winthrop.

"Asphodel! - When are you going to get away from here,

Winthrop?"

"I don't know."

"Has anything been done about it?"

"No."

"It is time, Winthrop."

Winthrop was silent.

"We must manage it somehow. You ought not to be fishing here any longer. I want you to get on the way."

"Ay - I must wait awhile," said the other with a sigh. "I shall go - that's all I know, but I can't see a bit ahead. I'm round there under the point now, and there's a big headland in the way that hides the up view."

Again the eyes of the fishers were fixed on their corks, gravely, and in the case of Rufus with a somewhat disturbed look.

"I wish I was clear of the headlands too," said he after a short silence; "and there's one standing right across my way now."

"What's that?"

"Books."

"Books?" said Winthrop.

"Yes - books which I haven't got."

"Books!" said his brother in astonishment.

"Yes -why?"

"I thought you said boots," the other remarked simply, as he disengaged a fish from the hook.

"Well," said Rufus sharply, "what then? what if I did? Can't a man want to furnish both ends of his house at once?"

"I have heard of a man in his sleep getting himself turned about with his head in the place of his feet. I thought he was dreaming."

"You may have your five dollars again, if you think them ill- bestowed," said the other putting his hand in his pocket; - "There they are! - I don't want them - I will find a way to stand on my own legs - with boots or without, as the case may be."

"I don't know who has better legs," said Winthrop. "I can't pity you."

"But seriously, Winthrop," said Rufus, smiling in spite of himself, - "a man may go empty-headed, but he cannot go bare- footed into a library, nor into society."

"Did you go much into society at Asphodel?" asked Winthrop.

"Not near so much as I shall - and that's the very thing. I can't do without these things, you see. They are necessary to me. Even at Asphodel - but that was nothing. Asphodel will be a very good place for you to go to in the first instance. You won't find yourself a stranger."

"Will you be ready for college next year?"

"Hum - don't know - it depends. I am not anxious about it - I shall be all the better prepared if I wait longer, and I should like to have you with me. It will make no difference in the end, for I can enter higher, and that will save expense. Seriously Winthrop, you must get away."

"I must catch that fish," said Winthrop, - "if I can -"

"You won't -"

"I've got him."

"There's one place at Asphodel where I've been a good deal - Mr. Haye's - he's an old friend of my father's and thinks a world of him. You'll like him - he's been very kind to me."

"What shall I like him for - besides that?" said Winthrop.

"O he's a man of great wealth, and has a beautiful place there, and keeps a very fine house, and he's very hospitable. He's always very glad to see me; and it's rather a pleasant change from Glanbally's vis-à-vis and underdone apple-pies. He is one of the rich, rich Mannahatta merchants, but he has a taste for better things too. Father knows him - they met some years ago in the Legislature, and father has done him some service or other since. He has no family - except one or two children not grown up - his wife is dead - so I suppose he was glad of somebody to help him eat his fine dinners. He said some very handsome things to encourage me. He might have offered me the use of his library - but he did not."

"Perhaps he hasn't one."

"Yes he has - a good one."

"It's got into the wrong hands, I'm afraid," said Winthrop.

"He has a little the character of being hard-fisted. At least I think so. He has a rich ward that he is bringing up with his daughter, - a niece of his wife's - and people say he will take his commission out of her property; and there is nobody to look after it."

"Well I shan't take the office," said Winthrop, getting up. "If the thought of Mr. Haye's fine dinner hasn't taken away your appetite, suppose we get home and see how these mackerel will look fried."

"It's just getting pleasant now," said Rufus as he rose to his feet. "There might be a worse office to take, for she will have a pretty penny, they say."

"Do you think of it yourself?"

"There's two of them," said Rufus smiling.

"Well, you take one and I'll take the other," said Winthrop. gravely. "That's settled. And here is something you had better put in your pocket as we go - it may be useful in the meanwhile."

He quietly gathered up the five dollars from the rock and slipped them into the pocket of Rufus's jacket as he spoke; then slipped himself off the rock, took the fishing tackle and baskets into the boat, and then his brother, and pushed out into the tide. There was a strong ebb, and they ran swiftly down past rock and mountain and valley, all in a cooler and fairer beauty than a few hours before when they had gone up. Rufus took off his hat and declared there was no place like home; and Winthrop sometimes pulled a few strong strokes and then rested on his oars and let the boat drop down with the tide.

"Winthrop," - said Rufus, as he sat paddling his hands in the water over the side of the boat, - "you're a tremendous fine fellow!"

"Thank you. - I wish you'd sit a little more in the middle."

"This is better than Asphodel just now," Rufus remarked as he took his hands out and straightened himself.

"How do you like Mr. Glanbally?"

"Well enough - he's a very good man - not too bright; but he's a very good man. He does very well. I must get you there, Winthrop."

Winthrop shook his head and turned the conversation; and Rufus in fact went away from home without finding a due opportunity to speak on the matter. But perhaps other agency was at work.

The summer was passed, and the fall nearly; swallowed up in farm duty as the months before had been. The cornstalks were harvested and part of the grain threshed out. November was on its way.

"Governor," said his father one night, when Winthrop was playing "even or odd" with Winifred and Asahel, a great handful of chestnuts being the game, - "Governor, have you a mind to take Rufus's place at Asphodel for a while this fall?"

The blood rushed to Winthrop's face; but he only forgot his chestnuts and said, "Yes, sir."

"You may go, if you've a mind to, and as soon as you like. - It's better travelling now than it will be by and by. I can get along without you for a spell, I guess."

"Thank you, father."

But Winthrop's eyes sought his mother's face. In vain little Winifred hammered upon his hand with her little doubled up fist, and repeated, "even or odd?" He threw down the chestnuts and quitted the room hastily.

Chapter 4 No.4

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