overhead thinning into tintless space; the low hills drawing farther off
in the melancholy light; the sky sinking nearer; clouds, unsteady all
day, softened at last into a thoughtful purple, and couching themselves
slowly in the hollows of the horizon; the sweep of cornfields and woods
and distant farms growing dim,--daguerreotype-like; the tinkle of the
sheep-bells on the meadows, the shouts of the boys in camp yonder, the
bass drone of the frogs in the swamp dulling down into the remoteness of
sleep. The Doctor slackened his sharp, jerking stride, and fell into
the monotonous gait of his companion, glancing up to him. McKinstry, he
thought, was going out to battle to-morrow with just as cool phlegm and
childlike content as he would set out to buy his merino ewes; but he
would receive no pay,--meant to transfer it to his men. And he would be
in the thickest of the fight,--you might bet on that. Umph! his quick
eyes darting over the big, leisurely frame, the neat yellow hair,
and the blue eyes mildly peering through spectacles. Then, having
satisfactorily anatomized McKinstry, he turned to the evening again with
open senses, the sensitive pulsing of his wide nostrils telling that
even the milky scent of the full-uddered cows gave him keen enjoyment.
The cows were going home from pasture, up shady barn-lanes, into the
grayer shadows about the houses on either side of the road, in whose
windows lights were beginning to glimmer. Solid old homesteads they
were, stone or brick, never wood. Out in these Western settlements, a
hundred years ago, they built durable homes, curiously enough, more than
in the Northern States; planted oaks about them, that bore the strength
of the earth up to heaven in sturdy arms, shaming the graceful,
uncertain elm of shallower soils. Just such old farm-houses as those,
Blecker thought, would turn out such old-time moulded men as McKinstry:
houses whose orchards still held on to the Waldower and Smoke-house
apples; their gardens gay with hollyhocks and crimson prince's-feather;
on the book-shelves the "Spectator" and "Gentleman's Magazine." The