In fifteen minutes he is on his way back to the tavern, chuckling, shaking, and triumphant. All is prepared. CHAPTER LXII. VERTY MUSES. Let us now leave the good old town of Winchester, and go into the hills, where the brilliant autumn morning reigns, splendid and vigorous. In the hills! Happy is the man who knows what those words mean; for only the mountain-born can understand them. Happy, then, let us say, are the mountain-born! We will not underrate the glories of the lowland and the Atlantic shore, or close our eyes to the wealth of the sea. The man is blind who does not catch the subtle charm of the wild waves glittering in the sun, or brooded over by the sullen storm; but "nigh gravel blind" is that other, whose eyes are not open to the grand beauty of the mountains. Let us not rhapsodize, or with this little bit of yellow ore, venture to speak of the great piles of grandeur from whose heart it was dug up. There is that about the mountains, with their roaring diapason of the noble pines, their rugged summits and far dying tints, purple, and gold, and azure, which no painter could express, had the genius of Titian and Watteau, and the atmosphere of Poussin, to speak over its creations. No! let them speak for themselves as all great things must--happy is he, who, by right of birth, can understand their noble voices! But there is the other and lesser mountain life--the life of the hills. Autumn loves these especially, and happy, too, are they who know the charm of the breezy hills! The hills where autumn pours her ruddy sunshine upon lordly pines--rather call them palms!--shooting their slender swaying trunks into the golden sea of morning, and, far up above, waving their emerald plumes in the laughing wind;--where the sward is fresh and dewy in the shivering delicious hunter's morning!--where the arrow-wood and dogwood cluster crimson berries, and the maple, alder tree and tulip, burn away--setting the dewy copse on fire with splendor! Yes, autumn loves the hills, and pours her brawling brooks, swarming with leaves, through thousands of hollows, any one of which might make a master-piece on canvas. Some day we shall have them--who knows?--and even the great mountain-ranges shall be mastered by the coming man. We do not know the name of the "hollow" through which Verty came on the bright morning of the day following the events we have just related. But autumn had never dowered any spot more grandly. All the trees were bright and dewy in the sunrise--birds were singing--and the thousand variegated colors of the fall swept on from end to end of it, swallowing the little stream, and breaking against the sky like a gay fringe. Verty knew all this, and though he did not look at it, he saw it, and his lips moved.