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CHAPTER XI The Lovers THEY RODE ON IN SILENCE, till their horses' feet again clattered in the clear, pebbly water of the stream. Here Nina checked her horse; and, pointing round the circle of pine forests, and up the stream, overhung with bending trees and branches, said: "Hush!—listen!" Both stopped, and heard the swaying of the pine-trees, the babble of the waters, the cawing of distant crows, and the tapping of the woodpecker. "How beautiful everything is!" she said. "It seems to me so sad that people must die! I never saw anybody dead before, and you don't know how it makes me feel! To think that that poor woman was just such a girl as I am, and used to be just so full of life, and never thought any 'more than I do that she should lie there all cold and dead! Why is it things are made so beautiful, if we must die?" "Remember what you said to the old man, Miss Nina. Perhaps she sees more beautiful things, now." "In heaven? Yes; I wish we knew more about heaven, so that it would seem natural and home-like to us, as this world does. As for me, I can't feel that I ever want to leave this world—I enjoy living so much! I can't forget how cold her hand was! I never felt anything like that cold!" In all the varying moods of Nina, Clayton had never seen anything that resembled this. But he understood the peculiar singleness and earnestness of nature which made any one idea, or impression, for a time absolute in her mind. They turned their horses into the wood-path, and rode on in silence. "Do you know," said she, "it's such a change coming from New York to live here? Everything is so unformed, so wild, and so lonely! I never saw anything so lonesome as these woods are. Here you can ride miles and miles, hours and hours, and hear nothing but the swaying of the pine-trees, just as you hear it now. Our place (you never were there, were you?) stands all by itself, miles from 113 114 DRED any other; and I've been for so many years used to a thickly-settled country, that it seems very strange to me. I can't help thinking things look rather deserted and desolate, here. It makes me rather sober and sad. I don't know as you'll like the appearance of our place. A great many things are going to decay about it; and yet there are some things that can't decay; for papa was very fond of trees and shrubbery, and we have a good deal more of them than usual. Are you fond of trees?" "Yes; I'm almost a tree-worshipper. I have no respect for a man who can't appreciate a tree. The only good thing I ever heard of Xerxes1 was, that he was so transported with the beauty of a planetree , that he hung it with chains of gold. This is a little poetical island in the barbarism of those days." "Xerxes!" said Nina. "I believe I studied something about him in that dismal, tedious history, at Madame Ardaine's; but nothing so interesting as that, I'm sure. But what should he hang gold chains on a tree for?" " 'T was the best way he knew of expressing his good opinion." "Do you know," said Nina, half checking her horse, suddenly, "that I never had the least idea that these men were alive that we read about in these histories, or that they had any feelings like ours? We always studied the lessons, and learnt the hard names, and how forty thousand were killed on one side, and fifty thousand on the other; and we don't know any more about it than if we never had. That's the way we girls studied at school, except a few 'poky' ones, who wanted to be learned, or meant to be teachers." "An interesting resume, certainly," said Clayton, laughing. "But, how strange it is," said Nina, "to think that all those folks we read about are alive now, doing something somewhere; and I get to wondering where they are—Xerxes, and Alexander,2 and the rest of them. Why, they were so full of life they kept everything in commotion while in this world; and I wonder if they have been keeping...

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