All at once the coachman drew up his horses on a curve of the highway. The carriage was completely buried in a valley along which wound the river, whose sweet noise they had long heard among the trees.
"Now children, look out," said the Judge, laughing pleasantly; "look out and tell me how we are to get through the hills."
Both the little girls sprang forward and looked abroad breathlessly, like birds at the open door of a cage in which they had been imprisoned. The Judge watched them with smiling satisfaction as they cast puzzled glances from side to side, meeting nothing but shoulders and angles and ridges of the mountains heaving over each other in huge green waves that seemed to be endless, and to crowd close to each other, though many a lovely valley lay between, little dreamed of by the wondering children.
"Well, then, tell me how you expect to get out, little ones?" repeated the Judge.
"Sure enough, how?" repeated Isabel, drawing back, and looking from the Judge to Mrs. Farnham.
But Mary was still gazing abroad. Her eyes wandered from hill to hill, and grew more and more luminous as each new beauty broke upon her. At last she drew back with a deep breath, and the loveliest of human smiles upon her face.
"Indeed, sir, indeed I shouldn't care if we never did get out, the river would be company enough."
"Yes, company enough," replied the Judge, smiling. "But would it feed us when we are hungry?"
"It don't seem as if I ever should be hungry here," replied the child.
"But I am hungry now," replied Enoch Sharp; "and so is Mrs. Farnham,
I dare say!"