_Mait_. Have you forgotten the fortune I wasted once on a summer's seat, some few miles up, on the lake above? These Yankees did me the grace to burn it, just as the war broke out. _Andre_. Ay, ay, that was _here_. I had forgotten the whereabouts. Those blackened ruins we passed last evening, perchance;--and the lady--my wood-nymph, what of her? _Mait_. Captain Andre, I beg your pardon, Sir. That sketch of yours reminded me, by chance perhaps, of one with whom some painful passages of my life are linked; and I said, in my haste, what were better left unsaid. Do me the favor not to remind me that I have done so. _Andre_. So--so! And I am to know nothing more of this smiling apparition; nay, not so much as to speak her name? Consider, Maitland, I am your friend it is true; but, prithee, consider the human in me. Give her a local habitation, or at least a name. _Mait_. I have told you already that the lady you speak of resides not far hence. On the border of these woods you may see her home. I may point it out to you securely, some few days hence;--to-night, unless you would find yourself in the midst of the American army, this must content you. _Andre_. A wild risk for a creature like that! Have these Americans no safer place to bestow their daughters than the fastnesses of this wilderness? _Mait_. It would seem so. Yet it is her home. Wild as it looks here, from the top of that hill, where our men came out on the picket just now so suddenly, you will see as fair a picture of cultured life as e'er your eyes looked on. No English horizon frames a lovelier one. _Andre_. _Here_? No! _Mait_. Between that hill and the fort, there stretches a wide and beautiful plain, covered with orchards and meadows to the wood's edge; and here and there a gentle swell, crowned with trees, some patch of the old wilderness. The infant Hudson winds through it, circling in its deepest bend one little fairy isle, with woods enough for a single bower, and a beauty that fills and characterizes, to its remotest line, the varied landscape it centres; and far away in the east, this same azure mountain-chain we have traced so long, with its changeful light and shade, finishes the scene. _Andre_. You should have been a painter, Maitland. _Mait_. The first time I beheld it--one summer evening it was, from the woods on the hill's brow;--we were a hunting party, I had lost my way, and ere I knew it there I stood;--its waters lay glittering in the sunset light, and the window-panes of its quiet dwellings were flashing like gold,--the old brown houses looked out through the trees like so many lighted palaces; and even the little hut of logs, nestling on the wood's edge, borrowed beauty from the hour. I was miles from home; but the setting sun could not warn me away from such a paradise, for so it seemed, set in that howling wilderness, and---- _Andre_. Prithee, go on. I listen.