“There is a silent peace-speaking in such a scene as this,” presently said Winthrop, lying on his sail and looking at the river.

“I dare say there is,” Elizabeth answered sadly.

“You cannot feel it, perhaps?”

“Not a particle.  I can just see that it might be.”

“The Bible makes such constant use of natural imagery, that to one familiar with it, the objects of nature bring back as constantly its teachings —­ its warnings —­ its consolations.”

“What now?” said Elizabeth.

“Many things.  Look at those deep and overlapping shadows.  ’As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth’” —­

“Stop, Mr. Winthrop!” Elizabeth exclaimed; —­ “Stop!  I can’t bear it.”

“Why?”

“I can’t bear it,” she repeated, in a passion of tears.

“Why?” said he again in the same tone, when a minute had gone by.

“Those words don’t belong to me —­ I’ve nothing to do with them,” she said, raising her head and dashing her tears right and left.

But Winthrop made no sort of answer to that, and a dead silence fell between the parties.  Again the prow of the sloop was heard rippling against the waves; and slowly she glided past mountain and shadow, and other hills rose and other deep shadows lay before them.  Elizabeth, between other thoughts, was tempted to think that her companion was as impassive and cold as the moonlight, and as moveless as the dark mountain lines that stood against the sky.  And yet she knew and trusted him better than that.  It was but the working of passing impatience and bitter feeling; it was only the chafing of passion against what seemed so self-contained and so calm.  And yet that very self-continence and calmness was what passion liked, and what passion involuntarily bent down before.

She had not got over yet the stunned effect of the past days and nights.  She sat feeling coldly miserable and forlorn and solitary; conscious that one interest was living at her heart yet, but also conscious that it was to live and die by its own strength as it might; and that in all the world she had nothing else; no, nor never should have anything else.  She could not have a father again; and even he had been nothing for the companionship of such a spirit as hers, not what she wanted to make her either good or happy.  But little as he had done of late to make her either, the name, and even the nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had clung to, were gone —­ and never could come back; and Elizabeth wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline, and the fathomless shadows that repeated it upon the water.

The night drew on, as the hills closed in more and more upon the narrowing river channel, and the mountain heads lifted themselves more high, and the shadows spread out broader upon the river.  Every light along shore had long been out; but now one glimmered down at them faintly from under a high thick wooded bluff, on the east shore; and the Julia Ann as she came up towards it, edged down a little constantly to that side of the river.