The forest stopped with clean decision. The road ran through fields where the corn had been cut and shocked. The shocks stood in rows like brown wigwams. Daniel and the phaeton came down to a little river, very clear, falling and murmuring over stones above and below a ford, but at the ford a mirror, reflecting autumn hills and heaven. Across the ford stretched a little pebbly beach, crowned with trees and grass, and behind the trees stood a brick house, old-red, not so large as large houses go, but of excellent line. It had a porch with Doric pillars, weather-softened. It stood among fine trees in a small valley shut in on all sides by hills and mountains, all forested to the top. Only the road and the river seemed to have way out and in, only road and river and air and birds. Valley and colored mountain walls were proportioned, modeled, tinted to some wide and deep artist's taste. The tone was rest without weakness, movement without fury, solitude that had all company. "How could you help but love it!" said the visiting woman. "I don't try to help it.... If it burned down--if the hills sank and the wood was destroyed--still it would endure, and still I could come here. Now we cross the river. Look at the bright stones and the minnows, gliding, darting!" Up from the river, across the pebbly shore, rose cedars dark and tall. "They are like warders. Only there's nothing, really, to ward out. All things may meet here. We go this way, to the back of the house." "It feels enchanted." "It is so simple. You might call it meek. There are people who pass who say, 'How lonely!'" They were now at the back of the house, where the road skirted the flower garden. Here was the back door, with three rounded, moss-grown steps of stone. Daniel and the phaeton stood still. The two women left the vehicle. A colored man appeared. "Miss Darcy, this is Mancy. Mancy, this is Miss Darcy, come to stay with us as long as she will." Mancy, tall and spare, with an Indian great-grandmother, said that he was glad to see her, and took her bags. In the brick kitchen in the yard, Mimy was singing: "Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home--" II