d bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood of
oaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade
above my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and
clumps of young saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The track
which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of
grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb
of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played
like a goldfish in the water.

From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled
a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
hue--reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse
sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate
the spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water
violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or
breaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some living
creature were about to emerge--the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in
the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss,
a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. How
would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her
sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples
and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her
hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with
morning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful
housewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy
wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by
cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like
a treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he
would find only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spot
where he had seen her.

Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should have
been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!
another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct
in all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect
of a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression
laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,
till it see