By dint of labour and taste, aided, in some degree, by accident, not less than fifty acres of ground had been cleared around the house of Mr. Prevost--not partially cleared, with large black stumps of trees sticking up in the fields, and assuming every sort of strange form, all hideous; but perfectly and entirely, leaving the ground (some part of which had, indeed, been free of forest when Mr. Prevost first settled there) smooth and trim as that of the fair farms of England. The fences, too, were all in good order, and the buildings neat and picturesque.
Beyond the cultivated ground, as you descended the gentle hill, lay the deep forest, at the distance of about three hundred yards; and at its edge Edith paused, and made her companion turn to see how beautiful the cottage looked upon its eminence, shaded by gorgeous maple-trees, in their gold and crimson garb of autumn, with a tall rock or two, grey and mossy, rising up amidst them.
Lord H---- gazed at the house, and saw that it was picturesque and beautiful--very different, indeed, from any other dwelling he had beheld on the western side of the Atlantic; but his eyes expressed an absent thoughtfulness, and Edith thought he did not admire it half enough.
Close by the spot where she had stopped appeared the entrance of a broad road, cut, probably, by the Dutch settlers many years before. It could not be called good, for it was furrowed and indented with many a rut and hollow, and roughened by obtrusive stones and rock; but there were no stumps of trees upon it, no fallen trunks lying across, which, for a forest road in America, at that time, was rare perfection. For about a quarter of a mile it was bordered on each side by tangled thicket, with gigantic pine-trees rising out of an impenetrable mass of underwood, in which berries of many a hue supplied the place of flowers. But flowers seem hardly wanting to an American autumn; for almost every leaf becomes a flower, and the whole forest glows with all the hues of yellow, red, and green, from the soft primrose-colour of the fading white-wood and sycamore, through every tint of orange, scarlet, and crimson on the maple, and of yellow and green on the larch, the pine, and the hemlock.
"How strange are man's prejudices and prepossessions!" ejaculated Lord H----, as they paused to gaze at a spot where a large extent of woodland lay open to the eye below them. "We are incredulous of everything we have not seen, or to the conception of which we have not been led by very near approaches. Had any one shown me, before I reached these shores, a picture of an autumn scene in America, though it had been perfect as a portrait, hue for hue, or even inferior in its striking colouring to the reality, I should have laughed at it as a most extravagant exaggeration. Did not the first autumn you passed here make you think yourself in fairy-land?"
"No; I was prepared for it," replied Edith; "my father had described the autumn scenery to me often before we came."
"Then was he ever in America before he came to settle?" asked her companion.
"Yes, once," answered Edith. She spoke in a very grave tone, and then ceased suddenly.
But her brother took the subject up with a boy's frankness, saying--"Did you never hear that my grandfather and my father's sister both died in Virginia? He was in command there, and my father came over just before my birth."
"It is a long story, and a sad one, my lord," interposed Edith, with a sigh; "but look now as we mount the hill, how the scene changes. Every step upon the hill-side gives us a different sort of tree, and the brush disappears from amidst the trunks. This grove is my favourite evening seat, where I can read and think under the broad shady boughs, with nothing but beautiful sights around me."