“O Winthrop, there is Bright Spot,” said Winnie, as her head came round to the less highly coloured western shore.

“Yes,” —­ said Winthrop, letting the boat drop a little down from under the mountain.

“How it has grown up! —­ and what are all those bushes at the water’s edge?”

“Alders.  Look at those clouds in the south.”

There lay, crossing the whole breadth of the river, a spread of close-folded masses of cloud, the under edges of which the sun touched, making a long network of salmon or flame-coloured lines.  And then above the near bright-leaved horizon of foliage that rose over Bright Spot, the western sky was brilliantly clear; flecked with little reaches of cloud stretching upwards and coloured with fairy sunlight colours, gold, purple, and rose, in a very witchery of mingling.

Winthrop pushed the boat gently out a little further from the shore, and they sat looking, hardly bearing to take their eyes from the cloud kaleidoscope above them, or to speak, the mind had so much to do at the eyes.  Only a glance now and then for contrast of beauty, at the south, and to the north where two or three little masses of grey hung in the clear sky.  Gently Winthrop’s oars dipped from time to time, bringing them a little further from the western shore and within fuller view of the opening in the mountains.  As they went, a purplish shade came upon the grey masses in the north; —­ the sunlight colours over Bright Spot took richer and deeper hues of purple and red; the salmon network in the south changed for rose.  And then, before they had got far, the moon’s crescent, two or three days old, a glittering silver thread, hung itself out amid the bright rosy flecks of cloud in the west just hard by the mountain’s brow.  Winnie had to look sharp to find it.

“And there is Venus too,” said Winthrop; —­ “look at her.”

“Where?”

“In the blue —­ a little lower down than the moon; and further to the south —­ do you see? —­”

“That white bright star? —­ O how beautiful! —­ in that clear blue sky.  O how bright! —­ how much brighter than the moon, Winthrop?”

“Yes, —­ she has a way of looking bright.”

“How did you know it was Venus, or how do you know?”

“Very much in the same way that I know it is Winnie.  I have seen her before.  I never saw those clouds before.”

“Did you ever see such clouds before!  And how long they stay, Winthrop.  O what a place!”

Slowly the little boat pulled over the river, getting further and further from Bright Spot and its bright bit of sky scenery, which faded and changed very slowly as they sailed away.  They neared the high rocky point of Shahweetah, and then instead of turning down the river, kept an easterly course along the low woody shore which stretched back from the point.  As they went on, and as the clouds lost their glory, the sky in the west over Wut-a-qut-o’s head tinged itself with violet and grew to an opal light, the white flushing up liquidly into rosy violet, which in the northeast quarter of the horizon melted away to a clear grave blue.