Sooth to say, the oreads were somewhat dazed by the company they were keeping, and found the wine a more potent brew than the liquid crystal of their mountain streams.  Red roses bloomed in Molly’s cheeks; her eyes grew starry, and no longer sought the ground; when one of the gentlemen wove a chaplet of oak leaves, and with it crowned her loosened hair, she laughed, and the sound was so silvery and delightful that the company laughed with her.  When the viands were gone, the negroes drew the cloth, but left the wine.  When the wine was well-nigh spent, they brought to their masters long pipes and japanned boxes filled with sweet-scented.  The fragrant smoke, arising, wrapped the knoll in a bluish haze.  A wind had arisen, tempering the blazing sunshine, and making low music up and down the hillsides.  The maples blossomed into silver, the restless poplar leaves danced more and more madly, the hemlocks and great white pines waved their broad, dark banners.  Above the hilltops the sky was very blue, and the distant heights seemed dream mountains and easy of climbing.  A soft and pleasing indolence, born of the afternoon, the sunlight, and the red wine, came to dwell in the valley.  One of the company beneath the spreading sugar-tree laid his pipe upon the grass, clasped his hands behind his head, and, with his eyes on the azure heaven showing between branch and leaf, sang the song of Amiens of such another tree in such another forest.  The voice was manly, strong, and sweet; the rangers quit their talk of war and hunting to listen, and the negroes, down by the fire which they had built for themselves, laughed for very pleasure.

When the wine was all drunken and the smoke of the tobacco quite blown away, a gentleman who seemed of a somewhat saturnine disposition, and less susceptible than his brother adventurers to the charms of the wood nymphs, rose, and declared that he would go a-fishing in the dark crystal of the stream below.  His servant brought him hook and line, while the grasshoppers in the tall grass served for bait.  A rock jutting over the flood formed a convenient seat, and a tulip-tree lent a grateful shade.  The fish were abundant and obliging; the fisherman was happy.  Three shining trophies had been landed, and he was in the act of baiting the hook that should capture the fourth, when his eyes chanced to meet the eyes of the child Audrey, who had left her covert of purple-berried alder, and now stood beside him.  Tithonus, green and hale, skipped from between his fingers, and he let fall his line to put out a good-natured hand and draw the child down to a seat upon the rock.  “Wouldst like to try thy skill, moppet?” he demanded.

The child shook her head.  “Are you a prince?” she asked, “and is the grand gentleman with, the long hair and the purple coat the King?”

The fisherman laughed.  “No, little one, I’m only a poor ensign.  The gentleman yonder, being the representative in Virginia of my Lord of Orkney and his Majesty King George the First, may somewhat smack of royalty.  Indeed, there are good Virginians who think that were the King himself amongst us he could not more thoroughly play my Lord Absolute.  But he’s only the Governor of Virginia, after all, bright eyes.”