"I say, let us go on for the present. We can turn round at any time, if it becomes necessary"; and Madame smiled benevolently at Miselle, down whose face the rain-drops streamed, but who stoutly asserted,—
"Oh, this is nothing. Only a fog-shower, you know. We shall have it fine directly."
"Not till we are out of Eel River. This valley gathers all the clouds, and they often get rain here when the sun is shining everywhere else."
"A regular vale of tears! Happy the remnant of the world that dwelleth not in Eel River!" murmured Miselle, surreptitiously pulling her water-proof cloak about her shoulders.
"Let me help you. Really, though, you are getting very wet, dear," remonstrated Optima.
"Not in the least. I enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged obstinacy of purpose.
"The church is an Orthodox meetinghouse, and the steeple is Orthodox too,—for the Cape. Anything else would blow down in the spring gales. Park-Street steeple, for instance, would stand a very poor chance here."
"Yes," said Miselle, vaguely, and she felt in her heart how this great ocean that dwarfs or prostrates the works of man replaces them by a temple builded in his own soul of proportions so lofty that God Himself may dwell visibly therein.
And now, having traversed the tearful valley, the road wound up the Delectable Mountains beyond, and so into the pine forest, through whose clashing needles glints of sunshine began to creep, while overhead the gray shaded softly into pearl and dazzling white and palest blue.
"There are deer in these Sandwich woods. See if we cannot find a pair of great brown eyes peering out at us from some of the thickets," suggested Madame.