“Is it not Emerson who says that all men are at heart religious?” Eletheer answered.
Mary made no reply, and they were soon climbing the steep, rocky incline near the entrance to the woods. It was known as the “Old Honk Falls’ path.” The day was excessively warm and strangely quiet. The Rondout creek tumbled musically over the rocks below, forming many beautiful cascades, and the girls stopped occasionally at some bend in the stream to watch the myriads of brilliant-hued dragon-flies glinting through the branches of some fallen tree; but in the oppressive afternoon heat even the birds seemed seeking a covert. The girls quickened their steps and soon disappeared into the woods beyond.
“Oh!” said Mary, as she sank on the carpet of fragrant pine-needles. “Talk of the ‘murmuring pines and the hemlocks.’ I fail to detect the slightest motion in these.”
The Rondout Creek tumbled musically over the rocks below forming many beautiful cascades
“It does seem unusually quiet, and that with the heat makes me apprehensive. Reuben would say ‘it means sumfin’,’” Eletheer returned, seating herself beside her companion.
“Well,” retorted Mary, “if you know a cooler spot, I’ll gladly follow to it; but did God ever create a more beautiful one?”
It was, indeed, a spot of rare beauty; such as must have inspired the cathedral-builders of old; great pines and hemlocks reared their lofty columns upward to be there crowned with a covering so dense as to admit scarcely a ray of sunshine. A solemn arcade indeed, whose cleft pillars were bound with brown withes of wild grape-vine. A brown carpet covered the floor and in this weird semi-twilight, one almost expected to hear a solemn Te Deum echo from the crossing branches above. The day was one of unearthly stillness and there was such a downpour of heat outside that the very air seemed on fire. Even the scattered clumps of ferns and jack-in-the-pulpits hung their heads as if in exhaustion.
“Are you feeling well to-day, Eletheer? You seem so preoccupied.”
“Physically, yes; but, Mary, I’m actually nervous. Everything looks so uncanny.”