As you ascended this road, on your right hand was a continuous wall of dull-hued evergreens, straggly pines and cedars, crowded closely and rising high above a thick underbrush. Behind this lay the vast, mysterious, silent wilderness. Here and there the emergence of a foamy, rushing river, or the entrance of a narrow corduroy road or trail, afforded a glimpse into its depths, and then you saw the slopes of hills and valleys, clad ever in one smoky, bluish veil of fir and pine. On the other hand, where you could see through the roadside brush, you looked down the mountain slope to the plains below, where the brawling mountain streams quieted down into pleasant water-courses; where broad patches of meadow land and wheat field spread out from edges of the woods, and where, far, far off, clusters of farm-houses, and further yet, towns and villages, sent their smoke up above the hazy horizon. It was a road of so much variety and sweep of view, as it kept its course along the boundary of the forest’s dateless antiquity, and yet in full view of the prosperous outposts of a well-established civilization, that the most calloused traveler might have been expected to look about him and take an interest in his surroundings. But the three people who drove slowly up this hill one August afternoon might have been passing through a tunnel for all the attention they paid to the shifting scene. Their vehicle was a farm-wagon; a fine, fresh-painted Concord wagon. The horses that drew it were large, sleek, and a little too fat. A comfortable country prosperity appeared in the whole outfit; and, although the raiment of the three travelers was unfashionably plain, they all three had an aspect of robust health and physical well-being, which was much at variance with their dismal countenances--for the middle-aged man who was driving looked sheepish and embarrassed; the good-looking, sturdy young fellow by his side was clearly in a state of frank, undisguised dejection, and the black-garbed woman, who sat behind in a splint-bottomed chair, had the extra-hard granite expression of the New England woman who particularly disapproves of something; whether that something be the destruction of her life’s best hopes or her neighbor’s method of making pie. For mile after mile they jogged along in silence. Occasionally the elder man would make some brief and commonplace remark in a tentative way, as though to start a conversation. To these feeble attempts the young man made no response whatever. The woman in black sometimes nodded and sometimes said “Yes?” with a rising inflection, which is a form of torture invented and much practiced in the New England States. [Illustration] It was late in the afternoon when a noise behind and below them made them all glance round. The middle-aged man drew his horses to one side; and, in a cloud of dust, a big, old-fashioned stage of a dull-red color overtook them and lumbered on its way, the two drivers interchanging careless nods.