A few vigorous strokes from Elijah's oars brought us across, and we were standing at the foot of the broken rocky bank visible from the windows of the cottage.
"Is there much custom at your ferry now?" asked Miss Vernon as we paid him.
"Not much to speak of, but I gets my crust; and at all events the Lord will provide," he said, raising his cap.
"Holy Vargin, listen to that now!" said Mrs. O'Toole with much fervour, "you're a mighty religious man entirely, Elijah; faith, Father Macdermott could'nt hould a candle to you, tho' he laid the Divil at Innishogue."
"Good bye," said her young lady, "we will be back in about an hour, Elijah."
Climbing the steep bank, we stood for a few moments at the top to look at the cottage, peeping prettily out from between the ivy-grown old church and the spreading oak I have before described; then following the path across the meadow where they were cutting the after grass, we fell into marching order, Mrs. O'Toole at one side of Kate, and I at the other, Cormac walking soberly between us.
It was a regular autumnal day—clear, calm, and grey, with a slight crispness in the air, an avant courier of frost. The wood through which the path soon led us, brilliant with all the variegated tints peculiar to the season, and fragrant with the odour of the gums exuding from the fir trees and young larches, seemed of tolerable extent, and now and then a pheasant would rise suddenly, with a whirr through the air, almost from our feet. A few withered leaves already strewed the ground, and nature appeared in her fullest beauty, though it was evident she was on the turning point. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of the river, and frequently heard it fretting against the rocks, which here and there opposed its progress.
Miss Vernon often paused to draw my attention to any picture, as she termed it, that struck her fancy; sometimes it was a long glade almost over-arched with leafy boughs, still retaining in their sheltered position the freshness of early summer, with a line of blue country beyond; sometimes it was a single tree of peculiar beauty, now a few old moss-grown trunks forgotten by the woodcutter, now a peep at a cottage chimney, with blue curling smoke at the other side of the river; every thing, from the rich green grass, and the endless variety of wild creepers, to the dry exhilarating atmosphere, seemed to be a source of joyous, grateful pleasure to her happy nature, gifted, as it appeared to be, with so deep a power of enjoyment. I found something contagious in her airy gaiety, and the extraordinarily keen sense of nature's beauty with which she was endowed, and asked her why it was she did not pursue drawing more steadily.
"I do not know," she replied; "it does not seem to come so naturally to me as music, though no one revels in scenery more delightedly than I do. Are you not obliged to me for this walk?"
"Indeed I am, I shall not soon forget it."