"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 etherealized 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.
Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt it so, for after his first expression of pleasure he stood silently and gravely looking for a long time. Little Fleda's eye loved it too, but she looked her fill and then sat down on a stone to await her companion's pleasure, glancing now and then up at his face which gave her no encouragement to interrupt him. It was gravely and even gloomily thoughtful. He stood so long without stirring that poor Fleda began to have sad thoughts of the possibility of gathering all the nuts from the hickory trees, and she heaved a very gentle sigh once or twice; but the dark blue eye which she with reason admired remained fixed on the broad scene below, as if it were reading or trying to read there a difficult lesson. And when at last he turned and began to go up the path again he kept the same face, and went moodily swinging his arm up and down, as if in disturbed thought. Fleda was too happy to be moving to care for her companion's silence; she would have compounded for no more conversation so they might but reach the nut trees. But before they had got quite so far Mr. Carleton broke the silence, speaking in precisely the same tone and manner he had used the last time.
"Look here, Fairy," said he, pointing to a small heap of chestnut burs piled at the foot of a tree,--"here's a little fortune for you already."
"That's a squirrel!" said Fleda, looking at the place very attentively.
"There has been nobody else here. He has put them together, ready to be carried off to his nest."
"We'll save him that trouble," said Mr. Carleton. "Little rascal! he's a Didenhover in miniature."
"Oh no!" said Fleda; "he had as good a right to the nuts I am sure as we have, poor fellow.--Mr. Carleton--"