CHAPTER IV.

A lonely dwelling, where the shore
Is shadowed with rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below. 
SHELLEY.

The winter was a long one to the separated family.  Quietly won through, and busily.  The father in the distant legislature; the brother away at his studies; and the two or three lonely people at home; —­ each in his place was earnestly and constantly at work.  No doubt Mr. Landholm had more time to play than the rest of them, and his business cares did not press quite so heavily; for he wrote home of gay dinings-out, and familiar intercourse with this and that member of the Senate and Assembly, and hospitable houses that were open to him in Vantassel, where he had pleasant friends and pleasant times.  But the home cares were upon him even then; he told how he longed for the Session to be over, that he might be with his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel, and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on dressing the flax.  And Winthrop, through the long winter, had taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a little calmer, not a whit the less strong.

He filled father’s and brother’s place —­ his mother knew how well.  Sam Doolittle knew, for he declared “there wa’n’t a stake in the fences that wa’n’t looked after, as smart as if the old chap was to hum.”  The grain was threshed as duly as ever, though a boy of sixteen had to stand in the shoes of a man of forty.  Perhaps Sam and Anderese wrought better than their wont, in shame or in admiration.  Karen never had so good a woodpile, Mrs. Landholm’s meal bags were never better looked after; and little Winifred and Asahel never wanted their rides in the snow, nor had more nuts cracked o’ nights; though they had only one tired brother at home instead of two fresh ones.  Truth to tell, however, one ride from Winthrop would at any time content them better than two rides from Will.  Winthrop never allowed that he was tired, and never seemed so; but his mother and Karen were resolved that tired he must be.

“He had pretty strength to begin with,” Karen said; “that was a good thing; and he seemed to keep it up too; he was shootin’ over everything.”

If Winthrop kept his old plans of self-aggrandizement, it was at the bottom of his heart; he looked and acted nothing but the farmer, all those months.  There was a little visit from Rufus too, at mid-winter, which must have wakened the spirit of other things, if it had been at all laid to sleep.  But if it waked it kept still.  It did not so much as shew itself.  Unless indirectly.

“What have you been doing all to-day, Governor?” said his little sister, meeting him with joyful arms as he came in one dark February evening.