ht. The mountains and the
northern sky and clouds were all floating as it were in a warm
flush of light -- it was upon the clouds, and through the air,
and upon the mountains' sides, -- so fair, so clear, but beyond
that, so rich in its glowing suffusion of beauty, that eyes
and tongue were stayed, -- the one from leaving the subject,
the other from touching it. Winthrop's oars lay still, the
drops falling more and more slowly from the wet blades. The
first word was a half awed whisper from Winnie --

"O Winthrop, -- did you ever see it look so?"

The oars dipped again, and again lay still.

"Winthrop, this isn't much like Mannahatta!" Winnie said next,
under breath.

The oars dipped again, and this time to purpose. The boat
began to move slowly onward.

"But Winthrop you don't say anything?" Winnie said uneasily.

"I don't know how."

"I wish I could keep a picture of that," she went on with
regretful accent as her eyes turned again to the wonderful
scene before them in the north, floating as it seemed in that
living soft glow.

"I shall keep a picture of it," said Winthrop.

Winnie sighed her regrets again, and then resigned herself to
looking with her present eyes, while the little boat moved
steadily on and the view was constantly changing; till they
were close under the shadow of Wut-a-qut-o, and from beneath
its high green and grey precipice rising just above them, only
the long sunny reach of the eastern shore remained in view.
They looked at it, till the sunset began to make a change.

"O Winthrop, there is Bright Spot," said Winnie, as her head
came round to the less highly coloured western shore.

"Yes," -- said Winthrop, letting the boat drop a little down
from under the mountain.

"How it has grown up! -- and what are all those bushes at the
water's edge?"

"Alders. Look at those clouds in the south."

There lay, crossing the whole breadth of the river, a spread
of close-folded masses of cloud, the under edges of which the
sun touched, making a long network of salmon or flame-coloured
lines. And then above the near bright-leaved horizon of
foliage that rose over Bright Spot, the western sky was
brilliantly clear; flecked with little reaches of cloud
stretching upwards and coloured with fairy sunlight colours,
gold, purple, and rose, in a very witchery of mingling.

Winthrop pushed the boat gently out a little further from the
shore, and they sat looking, hardly bearing to take their ey