Then the clouds themselves, as the sun dropped down, drank in the splendor. They turned to rose and crimson; they floated, and spread, and broke, and drifted up the valley, against the hills on right and left. Rags and shreds of them, trailing gorgeous with color, clung where the ridges caught them, and streamed like fragments of heavenly banners. The sky repeated the October woods,—the woods the sky,—in vivid numberless hues.
The sunset rolled up and around the watchers as they gazed. They were in it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the pervading glory.
It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling, "Now! now! O, was there ever anything like that?"
At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and diviner beauty.
A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with saffron-touched blue.
So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and peace of their rushing and melting together.
After all that, they came back by a step and a word—these mortal observers,—to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. Jeffords' hospitality.
"Where should she put them? Why, she was always ready. To be sure, the front upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room enough!"
"There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over the sittin'-room, and there's my room! I ain't never put out!"
"But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be."