For silent it was to us, standing in the
silence of a high place--silent with a Sunday stillness that made us
listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from
the spires that rose above the tree-tops--the tree-tops that lay as
far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great
shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep
of land at the mountain's foot.
"And so that is _your_ view?" asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; "you
are very generous to make it ours, too."
Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle
voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a
canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek
in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed
out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to
us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of
the green waves upon which we looked down. And yet, on the further
side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages--a little
world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.
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