"Oh do, Governor!"
"If you'll give us a boat instead of a breakfast, Mr. Cowslip, we will thank you just as much, and maybe take your hospitality another time."
"But won't you stop and take just a mouthful first? you'd better."
"No thank you. We shall have to take it up there; and two breakfasts a day don't agree with me."
With some sorrow on Mr. Cowslip's part, this was submitted to. The boat was got out; Hildebrand dropped into it and took the oars, "guessing he wouldn't mind going himself;" and Winthrop and Winnie sat close together in the stern. Not to steer; for Hildebrand was much too accustomed an oarsman to need any such help in coasting the river for miles up and down.
CHAPTER IV.
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs —
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind.
SHELLEY.
Winnie drew a breath of gratification, as the oars began to dimple the still water and the little boat rounded out from behind the wharf and headed up the river; the very same way by which Winthrop had taken Mr. Haye's two young ladies once long before. The tide was just at the turn, and Hildebrand made a straight run for the rocks.
"How pleasant it is to hear the oars again!" Winnie said.
Winthrop said nothing.
Swiftly they pulled up, dappling the smooth grey water with falling drops from the oar-blades, and leaving behind them two lines of spreading wavelets that tracked the boat's way. Cowslip's Mill fell into the distance, and all that shore, as they pulled out into the middle of the river; then they drew near the old granite ridge of Diver's Rock on the other side. The sun had got so low down as that now, and the light of years ago was on the same grey bluffs and patches of wood. It was just like years ago; the trees stood where they did, ay, and the sunlight; the same shadows fell; and the river washed the broken foot of the point with, it might be, the very same little waves and eddies. And there, a mile further on, Wut-a- qut-o's high green side rose up from the water. Winnie had taken off her bonnet and sat with her head resting upon Winthrop's side or arm, her common position whenever she could get it. And she sat and looked, first at one thing and then at another, with quiet tears running and some times streaming down her face. Then the boat struck off from Diver's Rock and pushed straight over for the rocks of Shahweetah. As it neared them, the dear old trees stood forth more plainly to view, each one for itself; and the wonted footholds, on turf and stone, could be told and could be seen, apart one from the other. Poor Winnie could not look at them then, but she put her head down and sobbed her greeting to them all.