“The season ’pears ter be toler’ble back’ard in the hollow, jedgin’ by the cove,” she remarked, her eyes resting wistfully upon the tender verdure on the margin of the river. The sun was warm, for it was not long past noon, and Bluff stopped to drink in the midst of the ford. The translucent brown water above the bowlders, all distinct in its clear depths, washed about the miry wheels, and lapsed with soft sighs against the rocky banks; great silvery circles elastically expanded on its surface about the ox’s muzzle, distorting somewhat the image of his head and his big, insistent, sullen eyes and long horns, as he drank. Whenever the sunbeams struck the current a bevy of tiny insects might be seen, skittering about over the water; and hark! a frog was croaking on a rotten log in the dank shadow of the laurel. From the fields beyond the call of the quail was sweet and clear. The ranges encompassing the cove on every hand seemed doubly beautiful, doubly dear, with the tender promise of summer upon them, with the freshened delights of soft airs pervading them, with the predominant sense of the liberated joys of nature in the bourgeonings and the blooms, in the swift rushing of torrents, in the whirl of wings. The wooded lines of those summits close at hand were drawn in fine detail against the sky, save where the great balds towered,—symmetrical, ponderous, bare domes; further mountains showed purple and blue, and among them was a lowering gray portent that might have seemed a storm-cloud, save to those who knew the strange, cumulose outline of Thunderhead. Everywhere birds were building. A couple of jays were carrying straws from a heap in a corner of a fence; they rose with a great whirl of blue and white feathers, as Bluff, his horns nodding, approached them. A dove was cooing in a clump of dogwood trees, whitely blooming by the road. There was a great commotion of wings in the air from a lofty martin-house in a wayside door-yard, as the plucky denizens chased a hawk round and round and out of sight. “Thought that thar war the way ter the post-office at Squair Bates’s, Jerry,” Alethea observed, pointing down one of those picturesque winding roads, so common to the region, threading the forests, its tawny red convolutions flecked with shadow and sheen, showing in long, fascinating vistas, and luring one to follow. “Yes, sir,” said Jerry, “but I hev got ter take ye ter the post-office at Locust Levels. Ain’t ye hearn aunt Dely ’low that? An’ I hev got ter leave ye thar whilst I go ter the grist-mill nigh by, off the road a piece.” Alethea flushed with a dull annoyance, recognizing the device that the long drive might be still longer. She nevertheless made no comment. They were each too dutiful to vary the plan of the journey, although aunt Dely might have considered this only obedience in the letter, and not in the spirit, as neither again spoke for a mile or more.