," said Reuben, "that's just what it looked like. But I don't
believe it really was a hand! You see those thin lily-leaves all about
the spot? Their stems are long, wonderfully long and slender. If one of
those queer, whitish catfish, like we used to catch, were to take hold
of a lily-stem and pull hard, the edges of the leaf might rise up and
wave just the way _that_ did! You can't tell what the catfish won't do
down there!"

"Perhaps that's all it was," said Celia.

"Though we can't be sure," added Reuben.

And thereafter, whensoever that green hand seemed to wave to them across
the pale water, they were content to leave the vision but half
explained.

It also came to pass, as unexpectedly as anything could come to pass by
the banks of the Perdu, that one dusky evening, as the boy and girl came
slowly over the meadows, they saw a radiant point of light that wavered
fitfully above the water. They watched it in silence. As it came to a
pause, the girl said in her quiet voice,--

"It has stopped right over the place where the heron stands!"

"Yes," replied Reuben, "it is evidently a will-o'-the-wisp. The queer
gas, which makes it, comes perhaps from the end of that dead tree-trunk,
just under the surface."

But the fact that the point of light was thus explicable, made it no
less interesting and little less mysterious to the dwellers about the
Perdu. As it came to be an almost nightly feature of the place, the
people supplemented its local habitation with a name, calling it "Reuben
Waugh's Lantern." Celia's father, treating the Perdu and all that
pertained to it with a reverent familiarity befitting his right of
proprietorship, was wont to say to Reuben,--

"Who gave you leave, Reuben, to hoist your lantern on my property? If
you don't take it away pretty soon, I'll be having the thing put in
pound."

It may be permitted me to cite yet one more incident to illustrate more
completely the kind of events which seemed of grave importance in the
neighborhood of the Perdu. It was an accepted belief that, even in the
severest frosts, the Perdu could not be securely frozen over. Winter
after winter, to be sure, it lay concealed beneath such a covering of
snow as only firm ice could be expected to support. Yet this fact was
not admitted in evidence. Folks said the ice and snow were but a film,
waiting to yield upon the slightest pressure. Furthermore, it was held
that neither bird nor beast was ever known to tread the