The air seemed to have twice the life it had the evening before; the light was fair, beyond words to tell.

Here its fresh gilding was upon a mountain slope; there it stretched in a long misty beam athwart a deep valley; it touched the broken points of rock, and glanced on the river, and seemed to make merry with the birds; fresh, gladsome and pure as their song.

No token of man's busy life yet in the air; the birds had it.

Only over Shahweetah valley, and from Mr.Underhill's chimney on the other side of the river, and from Sam Doolittle's in the bay, thin wreaths of blue smoke slowly went up, telling that there, -- and there, -- and there, -- man was getting ready for his day's work, and woman had begun hers! Only those, and the soft stroke of Winthrop's oars; but to Elizabeth that seemed only play.

She sat perfectly still, her eye varying from their regular dip to the sunny rocks of the headland, to the coloured mountain heads, the trees, the river, the curling smoke, -- and back again to the oars; with a grave, intent, deep notice-taking.