that would fain explore their
glimmering recesses.

No, nothing except birds and trees, water-lilies and such like
happenings, ever happens along the old canal; and our nearest to a human
event was our meeting with a lonely, melancholy man, sitting near a
moss-grown water-wheel, smoking a corn-cob pipe, and gazing wistfully
across at the Ramapo Hills, over which great sunlit clouds were
billowing and casting slow-moving shadows. Stopping, we passed him the
time of day and inquired when the next barge was due. For answer he took
a long draw at his corn-cob, and, taking his eyes for a moment from the
landscape, said in a far-away manner that it might be due any time now,
as the spring had come and gone, and implying, with a sort of sad humour
in his eyes, that spring makes all things possible, brings all things
back, even an old slow-moving barge along the old canal.

"What do they carry on the canal?" I asked the melancholy man, the
romantic green hush and the gleaming water not irrelevantly flashing on
my fancy that far-away immortal picture of the lily-maid of Astolat on
her strange journey, with a letter in her hand for Lancelot.

"Coal," was his answer; and, again drawing at his corn-cob, he added,
with a sad and understanding smile, "once in a great while." Like most
melancholy men, he seemed to have brains, in his way, and to have no
particular work on hand, except, like ourselves, to dream.

"Suppose," said I, "that a barge should come along, and need to be drawn
up this 'plane'--would the old machinery work?" and I pointed to six
hundred feet of sloping grass, down which a tramway stretches and a
cable runs on little wheels--technically known, it appeared, as a
"plane."

Then the honour of the ancient company for which he had once worked
seemed to stir his blood, and he awakened to something like enthusiasm
as he explained the antique, picturesque device by which it is still
really possible for a barge to climb six hundred feet of grass and
fern--drawn up in a long "cradle," instead of being raised by locks in
the customary way.

Then he took us into the old building where, in the mossed and dripping
darkness, we could discern the great water-wheels that work this
fascinating piece of ancient engineering; and added that there would
probably be a barge coming along in three or four days, if we should
happen to be in the neighbourhood. He might have added that the old
canal is one of the few places where "ti