He pointed diagonally across a ravine, where, amidst the dusky depths of green shadows, and close to a gray cloud that came surging through the valley, a narrow, gleaming, white, feathery mountain cataract, with an impetus and a motion like the flight of an arrow smartly sped from the bow, shot down into the gorge. It transfixed Cap'n Lucy. He stood staring at it, motionless, amazed, it might seem aghast. For the boundary line that the surveyor was running according to the compass and calls had thrown within his tract this mountain torrent, this wayward alien, which he had known for many a year as the native of the Kenniston woods. "It makes no difference, gentlemen, what ye hev 'lowed ye owned, an' what ye didn't," interposed the surveyor: "this boundary line I'm runnin' out will show ye the exac' extent o' yer possessions." And once more he bent to take sight. Then he rose and stalked forward, his Jacob's staff held before him, his eyes intent and fixed, the links of the chain once more dully clanking as it writhed through the grass, and the chain-bearers, with their cabalistic refrain, "Stick!" "Stuck!" bowing down and rising up, as they ever and again drew it out taut to its extreme length between them. The spectators followed on either hand, plunging into the deeper forest, which, as it interposed before the cliffs, cut off the view of the wide landscape, that seemed lifted into purer light and more transparent color by the contrast with the bosky shadows as it disappeared, and again was vaguely glimpsed between the boles and hanging branches, and once more vanished, leaving the aspect of the world the bare breadth of the herder's trail through the laurel. Two of the men--shaggy of beard and of hair, and shabbier far of garb than the others--gazed at the proceeding with the eyes of deep wonderment and reluctant acceptance, as if it were some formula of necromancy which revolted credulity. They were denizens of a deeply secluded cove near by, lured hither by the report of the processioning, and looking for the first time upon the simple paraphernalia of land-surveying,--the chain, the Jacob's staff, and the compass; even the surveyor and the chain-bearers were only the verification of wild rumors that had reached them. They were not unintelligent; they were only uninformed. The knowledge and experience of the commonplace process which the others possessed might hardly be considered an adequate set-off against such fresh and illimitable capacities of impressionability. Few people can so enjoy a day of sight-seeing as fell to the share of these denizens of "Painter Flats."