"It's not what it was," he said, and wagged his head. "It's a sad lake compared to what it was."
David controlled his impatience.
"Tell me how it is changed."
"The color," said the old man. "Why, once, with a gallon of that blue you could have painted the whole sky." He shaded his face to look up, but so doing his glance ventured through the branches and close to the white-hot circle of the sun. His head dropped and he leaned on one arm.
"Look at the green of the grass," suggested David. "It will rest your eyes."
"Do you think my eyes are weak? No, I dropped my head to think how the world has fallen off in the last fifty years. It was all different in the days of John. But that was before you came to the valley."
"The sky was not the same?" queried the master.
"And men, also," said Abraham instantly. "Ho, yes! John was a man; you will not see his like in these days."
David flushed, but he held back his first answer. "Perhaps."
"There is no 'perhaps.'"