oolboy loves built their queer nests among the
waterweeds; and sometimes a silly adventurer--alarmed by the majestic
approach of a large fish--would rush on to the loamy bank at the shallow
end of the lake and wriggle piteously in hopeless failure. The
afternoons were divinely restful by the varied shores of the limpid
lake. Sometimes as the sun sloped there might come hollow blasts of wind
that had careered for a brief space over the woods; but the brooding
heat, the mastering silence, the feeling that multifarious quiescent
living things were ready to start into action, all took the senses with
somnolence. That drowsy joy, that soothing silence which seemed only
intensified by the murmur of bees and the faint gurgle of water, were
like medicine to the soul; and it seemed that the conception of Nirvana
became easily understood as the delicious open-air reverie grew more and
more involved and vague. Then the last look of the sun, the creeping
shadows that made the sea gray and turned the little lake to an inky
hue, and then the slow fall of the quiet-coloured evening, and, last,
the fall of the mystic night!

Poor little birds, moving uneasily in the darkness, threw down tiny
fragments from the rocks, and each fragment fell with a sound like the
clink of a delicate silver bell; softly the sea moaned, softly the
night-wind blew, and softly--so softly!--came whispering the spirits of
the dead. Joyous faces could be seen by that lake long, long ago. In
summer, when the lower rim was all blazing with red and yellow flowers,
young lovers came to whisper and gaze. They are dead and gone. In
winter, when the tarn was covered with jetty glossy ice, there were
jovial scenes whereof the jollity was shared by a happy few. Round and
round on the glossy surface the skaters flew and passed like gliding
ghosts under the gloom of the rocks; the hiss of the iron sounded
musically, and the steep wall flung back sharp echoes of harmless
laughter. Each volume of sound was magically magnified, and the gay
company carried on their pleasant outing far into the chili winter
night. They are all gone! One was there oftenest in spring and summer,
and the last sun-rays often made her golden hair shine in splendour as
she stood gazing wistfully over the solemn lake. She saw wonders there
that coarser spirits could not know; and all her gentle musings passed
into poetry--poetry that was seldom spoken. Those who loved her never
cared to break her sac