tch the sheeny maze as long
as one will, the eye cannot get at the clue, and so unwind the pattern.

Each seems for a second exactly like its fellow, but varies while you
say "These two are the same," and the white reflected light upon the
wide stream is now strongest here, and instantly afterwards flickers
yonder.

Where a gap in the willows admits a current of air a ripple starts to
rush straight across, but is met by another returning, which has been
repulsed from the bluff bow of a moored boat, and the two cross and run
through each other. As the level of the stream now slightly rises and
again falls, the jagged top of a large stone by the shore alternately
appears above, or is covered by the surface. The water as it retires
leaves for a moment a hollow in itself by the stone, and then swings
back to fill the vacuum.

Long roots of willows and projecting branches cast their shadow upon the
shallow sandy bottom; the shadow of a branch can be traced slanting
downwards with the shelve of the sand till lost in the deeper water. Are
those little circlets of light enclosing a round umbra or slightly
darker spot, that move along the bottom as the bubbles drift above on
the surface, shadows or reflections?

In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems no current, a
dust gathers on the water, falling from the trees, or borne thither by
the wind and dropping where its impulse ceases. Shadows of branches lie
here upon the surface itself, received by the greenish water dust. Round
the curve on the concave and lee side of the river, where the wind
drives the wavelets direct upon the strand, there are little beaches
formed by the undermining and fall of the bank.

The tiny surge rolls up the incline; each wave differing in the height
to which it reaches, and none of them alike, washing with it minute
fragments of stone and gravel, mere specks which vibrate to and fro with
the ripple and even drift with the current. Will these fragments, after
a process of trituration, ultimately become sand? A groove runs athwart
the bottom, left recently by the keel of a skiff, recently only, for in
a few hours these specks of gravel, sand, and particles that sweep along
the bottom, fill up such depressions. The motion of these atoms is not
continuous, but intermittent; now they rise and are carried a few inches
and there sink, in a minute or two to rise again and proceed.

Looking to windward there is a dark tint upon the water;