"I hope not," said he, laughing. "Well, then, I thought you might be one of those young ladies the fairy-stories tell of, who set out over the world to seek their fortune. That might hold, you know, a little provision to last for a day or two till you found it."
"No," said Fleda, "I should never go to seek my fortune."
"Why not, pray?"
"I don't think I should find it any the sooner."
Mr. Carleton looked at her, and could not make up his mind whether or not she spoke wittingly.
Well, but after all, are we not seeking our fortune?" said he. "We are doing something very like it. Now up here on the mountain-top perhaps we shall find only empty trees perhaps trees with a harvest of nuts on them."
"Yes, but that wouldn't be like finding a fortune," said Fleda; "if we were to come to a great heap of nuts all picked out ready for us to carry away, that would be a fortune; but now if we find the trees full, we have got to knock them down, and gather them up, and shuck them."
"Make our own fortunes, eh?" said Mr. Carleton, smiling.
"Well! people do say those are the sweetest nuts. I don't know how it may be. Ha! that is fine. What an atmosphere!"
They had reached a height of the mountain that cleared them a view, and over the tops of the trees they looked abroad to a very wide extent of country undulating with hill and vale, hill and valley alike far below at their feet. Fair and rich, the gently swelling hills, one beyond another, in the patchwork dress of their many-coloured fields, the gay hues of the woodland softened and melted into a rich autumn glow, and far away, beyond even where this glow was sobered and lost in the distance, the faint blue line of the Catskill faint, but clear and distinct, through the transparent air. Such a sky! of such etherialized purity as if made for spirits to travel in, and tempting them to rise and free themselves from the soil; and the stillness, like nature's hand laid upon the soul, bidding it think. In view of all that vastness and grandeur, man's littleness does bespeak itself. And yet, for every one, the voice of the scene is not more humbling to pride than rousing to all that is really noble and strong in character. Not only "What thou art," but "What thou mayest be!" What place thou oughtest to fill what work thou hast to do, in this magnificent world. A very extended landscape, however genial, is also sober in its effect on the mind. One seems to emerge from the narrowness of individual existence, and take a larger view of Life as well as of Creation.