The "mere" was clear as plate glass, and came to the edge of the shaven
lawn, and reflected flowers, turf, and overhanging shrubs deliciously.

Yet an ill name brooded over its seductive waters; for two persons had
been drowned in it during the last hundred years: and the last one was
the parson of the parish, returning from the squire's dinner in the
normal condition of a guest, A.D. 1740-50. But what most affected the
popular mind was, not the jovial soul hurried into eternity, but the
material circumstance that the greedy pike had cleared the flesh off his
bones in a single night, so that little more than a skeleton, with here
and there a black rag hanging to it, had been recovered next morning.

This ghastly detail being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by
two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure
it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and
delicious waters, where flowers did glass themselves.

As for the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a
trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it
as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been
filled up threescore years agone.

The castle itself was no castle, nor had it been for centuries. It was
just a house with battlements; but attached to the stable was an old
square tower, that really had formed part of the mediaeval castle.

However, that unsubstantial shadow, a name, is often more durable than
the thing, especially in rural parts; but, indeed, what is there in a
name for Time's teeth to catch hold of?

Though no castle, it was a delightful abode. The drawing-room and
dining-room had both spacious bay-windows, opening on to the lawn that
sloped very gradually down to the pellucid lake, and there was mirrored.
On this sweet lawn the inmates and guests walked for sun and mellow air,
and often played bowls at eventide.

On the other side was the drive up to the house-door, and a sweep, or
small oval plot, of turf, surrounded by gravel; and a gate at the corner
of this sweep opened into a grove of the grandest old spruce-firs in the
island.

This grove, dismal in winter and awful at night, was deliciously cool
and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems
stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of
sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic grove,--_nulli
penetrabi