“Lay it on, Will! —­ Lay it on!  Hi —­ That’s right —­ Tuck it on, Will! —­”

Till Will’s arm was tired; and flinging away from them, in a towering passion still, he went up the hill after his oxen.  Sam rubbed his legs.

“I say, Governor, we’re quits now, ben’t we?” he said in a sort of mock humble good-humour, as Winthrop was about to follow his brother.

“Yes, yes.  Be off with yourself!”

“I wish it had ha’ been ’tother one, anyhow,” muttered Sam.

Not a word passed between the brothers about either the ducking or the flagellation.  They spoke not but to their oxen.  Rufus’s mouth was in the heroic style yet, all the way up the hill; and the lips of the other only moved once or twice to smile.

The day was sultry, as it had promised, and the uphill lay of the ground made the ploughing heavy, and frequent rests of the oxen were necessary.  Little communication was held between the ploughmen nevertheless; the day wore on, and each kept steadily to his work and seemingly to his own thoughts.  The beautiful scene below them, which they were alternately facing and turning their backs upon, was too well known even to delay their attention; and for the greater part of the day probably neither of them saw much beyond his plough and his furrow.

They were at work on a very elevated point of view, from which the channel of the river and the high grounds on the other side were excellently seen.  Valley there was hardly any; the up-springing walls of green started from the very border of the broad white stream which made its way between them.  They were nowhere less than two hundred feet high; above that, moulded in all manner of heights and hollows; sometimes reaching up abruptly to twelve or fourteen hundred feet, and sometimes stretching away in long gorges and gentle declivities, —­ hills grouping behind hills.  In Summer all these were a mass of living green, that the eye could hardly arrange; under Spring’s delicate marshalling every little hill took its own place, and the soft swells of ground stood back the one from the other, in more and more tender colouring.  The eye leapt from ridge to ridge of beauty; not green now, but in the very point of the bursting leaf, taking what hue it pleased the sun.  It was a dainty day; and it grew more dainty as the day drew towards its close and the lights and shadows stretched athwart the landscape again.  The sun-touched lines and spots of the mountains now, in some places, were of a bright orange, and the shadows between them deep neutral tint or blue.  And the river, apparently, had stopped running to reflect.

The oxen were taking one of their rests, in the latter part of the day, and Winthrop was sitting on the beam of his plough, when for the first time Rufus came and joined him.  He sat down in silence and without so much as looking at his brother; and both in that warm and weary day sat a little while quietly looking over the water; or perhaps at the little point of rest, the little brown spot among the trees on the promontory, where home and mother and little baby sister, and the end of the day, and the heart’s life, had their sole abiding-place.  A poor little shrine, to hold so much!