bs, and snake-berries, and the elvish trifoliate plants of the
purple and the painted trillium. The steep bank, and the grove, and the
Perdu with them, ran along together for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and
then faded out of existence, absorbed into the bosom of the meadows.

The Perdu was but a stone's throw broad, throughout its entire length.
The steep with its trunks and leafage formed the northern bound of it;
while its southern shore was the green verge of the meadows. Along this
low rim its whitish opalescent waters mixed smoothly with the roots and
over-hanging blades of the long grasses, with the cloistral arched
frondage of the ferns, and with here and there a strayed spray of purple
wild-pea. Here and there, too, a clump of Indian willow streaked the
green with the vivid crimson of its stems.

Everything watched and waited. The meadow was a sea of sun mysteriously
imprisoned in the green meshes of the grass-tops. At wide intervals
arose some lonely alder bushes, thick banked with clematis. Far off, on
the slope of a low, bordering hill, the red doors of a barn glowed
ruby-like in the transfiguring sun. At times, though seldom, a blue
heron winged over the level. At times a huge black-and-yellow bee hummed
past, leaving a trail of faint sound that seemed to linger like a
perfume. At times the landscape, that was so changeless, would seem to
waver a little, to shift confusedly like things seen through running
water. And all the while the meadow scents and the many-colored
butterflies rose straight up on the moveless air, and brooded or dropped
back into their dwellings.

Yet in all this stillness there was no invitation to sleep. It was a
stillness rather that summoned the senses to keep watch, half
apprehensively, at the doorways of perception. The wide eye noted
everything, and considered it,--even to the hairy red fly alit on the
fern frond, or the skirring progress of the black water-beetle across
the pale surface of the Perdu. The ear was very attentive--even to the
fluttering down of the blighted leaf, or the thin squeak of the bee in
the straitened calyx, or the faint impish conferrings of the moisture
exuding suddenly from somewhere under the bank. If a common sound, like
the shriek of a steamboat's whistle, now and again soared over across
the hills and fields, it was changed in that refracting atmosphere, and
became a defiance at the gates of waking dream.

The lives, thoughts, manners, even the o