ntle breathing slumber, which stole upon my
senses, as they fainted under the excessive heat of the season at
that hour; a cane couch, with my work basked for a pillow, were all the
conveniences of my short repose; for I was soon awaked and alarmed by a
flounce, and noise of splashing in the water. I got up to see what was
the matter; and what indeed should it be but the son of a neighbouring
gentleman, as I afterwards found (for I had never seen him before),
who had strayed that way with his gun, and heated by his sport, and the
sultriness of the day, had been tempted by the freshness of the clear
stream; so that presently stripping, he jumped into it on the other
side, which bordered on a wood, some trees whereof, inclined down to the
water, formed a pleasing shady recess, commodious to undress and leave
his clothes under.

"My first emotions at the sight of this youth, naked in the water, were,
with all imaginable respect to truth, those of surprise and fear;
and, in course, I should immediately have run out, had not my modesty,
fatally for itself, interposed the objection of the door and window
being so situated, that it was scarce possible to get out, and make my
way along the bank to the house, without his seeing me: which I could
not bear the thought of, so much ashamed and confounded was I at having
seen him. Condemned then to stay till his departure should release me,
I was greatly embarrassed how to dispose of myself: I kept some time
betwixt terror and modesty, even from looking through the window, which
being an old fashioned casement, without any light behind me, could
hardly betray any one's being there to him from within; then the door
was so secure, that without violence, or my own consent, there was no
opening it from without.

"But now, by my own experience, I found it too true, that objects which
affright us, when we cannot get from them, draw our eyes as forcibly as
those that please us. I could not long withstand that nameless impulse,
which, without any desire of this novel sight, compelled me towards
it; emboldened too by my certainty of being at once unseen and safe,
I ventured by degrees to cast my eyes on an object so terrible and
alarming to my virgin modesty as a naked man.

"But as I snatched a look, the first gleam that struck me, was in general
the dewy lustre of the whitest skin imaginable, which the sun playing
upon made the reflection of it perfectly beamy. His face, in the
confusion