The steep ground was covered with the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray teasles which grew to greater height.

Through the teasles the white and purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water--rich, soft, vague in outline.

At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow butterflies, that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray hillside, shot with the white and the blue.

At the foot of the bank lay the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen.
The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the huge bronze-leafed nut-trees, whose shelter she had just left, the woodpeckers were tapping and whistling to one another.
At length Smith sighed deeply, but without affectation.

"Yes, I reckon that's a good deal how it is.