We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island.  Towns and villages lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit green.  For silent it was to us, standing in the silence of a high place—­silent with a Sunday stillness that made us listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from the spires that rose above the tree-tops—­the tree-tops that lay as far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep of land at the mountain’s foot.

“And so that is your view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you are very generous to make it ours, too.”

Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle voice, as if he felt the influence of the place.  He had paddled a canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek in that vast stretch of landscape.  He found his landmarks, and pointed out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of the green waves upon which we looked down.  And yet, on the further side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—­a little world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.

“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said; “there is such a thing as getting so far above our fellow men that we see only one side of them.”

Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—­than the Major’s dissertations upon his everlasting circulars!  My wife and I exchanged glances.

“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn” Mr. Brede began.

“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife, “I didn’t know you ever went up the Matterhorn.”

“It—­it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede, hurriedly.  “I—­I didn’t tell you—­when I was on the other side, you know—­it was rather dangerous—­well, as I was saying—­it looked—­oh, it didn’t look at all like this.”

A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field where we lay.  The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow and reappeared far below, a rapidly decreasing blot, flying eastward over the golden green.  My wife and I exchanged glances once more.

Somehow, the shadow lingered over us all.  As we went home, the Bredes went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked together.

“Should you think,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”

“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered, evasively; “this isn’t the first year I have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb it—­for a farm.”