Then over the farm, broad and bountiful, scanning every detail of the large red house, the great barns and sheds, the flocks of turkeys, and the geese, kept for feathers, and not dreamed of for eating. (Our Puritan fathers held neither to Christmas nor Christmas goose.) Through the path up by the well-sweep, where the moss-covered bucket hangs dripping with the purest of water.  Beyond the corn-barn to the butternut-trees,—­by this time, they have dropped their rich, oily fruit; and the chestnut-burrs, split open, and lying on the sunny ground.  Then round to the house again, where the slant October sun shines in at the hospitable open door, where the little wheel burrs contentedly, and the loom goes flap-flap, as the strong arm of Cely Temple presses the cloth together, and throws the shuttle past, like lightning:  stout cloth for choppers and ploughmen comes out of that loom!

In all his peepings at the interior of the house, one figure has accompanied him, beautified and glorified the place; so that, whether he looks into the buttery, where fair, round cheeses fill the shelves, or wanders up the broad stairs with wide landings to the “peacock chamber,” he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred recollections.  Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander, where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and-white sketches, ill displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures, very brown,—­even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to a height that would defy “the true princess” to feel a pea through it, and the white toilet-table, neatly ornamented with a holder and a pair of scissors, both sacred from common usage.  Asparagus in the chimney, with scarlet berries.  General Washington, very dingy and respectable, over the fireplace; and two small circular frames, inclosing the Colonel and his wife in profile.  The likenesses are nearly exact, and the two noses face each other as if in an argument.  Dutch tiles are set round the fireplace, of odd Scripture scenes, common in design and coarse in execution.  Into the “square room” below, where the originals of the black profiles sit and smoke their pipes, Swan does not care to venture.  But some day, he will show the Colonel!

Many days, these thoughts came to Swan.  Months, alas, years, they came,—­but few and far between.  The five thousand dollars that was to have been the summit was soon only the footstool of his ambition.  He became partner, and then head of a house having commercial relations with half the world.  His habits assimilated themselves to the country about him, and the cool, green pictures of his mountain-home ceased to float before his sleeping eyes or soothe his waking fancies.