med just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrily
into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the
dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy
twigs, the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was
diffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness
and became a glory round that head so beautiful.

My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus
tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was
the face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or
faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.

My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend where
that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest
motion, or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus
have I often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in
hopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race and
attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the
daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under
the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that
one moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain,
or fairy or woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of
some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good
truth, had a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bear
pressure stolen softly behind me and thrown her image into the spring?

I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a
spell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted
spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the
sunbeam glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog,
the hermit of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled
snout and made himself invisible--all except a pair of long
legs--beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish look. I could have
slain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned in
the fountain.

Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the
church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees
insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of
radiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow
falling to the east. The afternoon bei