That evening, —­ it was the seventeenth of August, and very fair, —­ they went down to the rocks, just when the afternoon had grown cool in the edge of the evening.  Winnie put herself in the stern of the little white boat, and Winthrop took his old place and the oars.  Winnie’s eyes were sparkling.

“It will be harder work to pull than it used to be,” she remarked joyously, —­ “you’re so out of the habit of it.”

Winthrop only replied by pushing the little skiff off.

“However,” continued Winnie, “I guess it isn’t much to pull me anywhere.”

“Which way shall we go?” said Winthrop, one or two slow strokes of his oar sending the little boat forward in a way that made Winnie smile.

“I don’t know —­ I want to go everywhere —­ Let’s go up, Winthrop, and see how it looks —­ Let’s go over under Wut-a-qut-o.  O how beautiful it is, Winthrop! —­”

Winthrop said nothing, but a repetition of those leisurely strokes brought the boat swiftly past the cedars and rocks of Shahweetah’s shore and then out to the middle of the river, gradually drawing nearer to the other side.  But when the mid-river was gained, high enough up to be clear of the obstructing point of Shahweetah, Winnie’s ecstatic cry of delight brought Winthrop’s head round; and with that he lay upon his oars and looked too.  He might.  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.