lled,
behind the islands, which shelter them like a protecting reef. They drop
equally quickly, and thus it is not uncommon for the morning to be calm,
the midday raging in waves dashing resistlessly upon the beach, and the
evening still again. The Irish, who are accustomed to the salt ocean,
say, in the suddenness of its storms and the shifting winds, it is more
dangerous than the sea itself. But then there are almost always islands,
behind which a vessel can be sheltered.

Beneath the surface of the Lake there must be concealed very many
ancient towns and cities, of which the names are lost. Sometimes the
anchors bring up even now fragments of rusty iron and old metal, or
black beams of timber. It is said, and with probability, that when the
remnant of the ancients found the water gradually encroaching (for it
rose very slowly), as they were driven back year by year, they
considered that in time they would be all swept away and drowned. But
after extending to its present limits the Lake rose no farther, not even
in the wettest seasons, but always remains the same. From the position
of certain quays we know that it has thus remained for the last hundred
years at least.

Never, as I observed before, was there so beautiful an expanse of water.
How much must we sorrow that it has so often proved only the easiest
mode of bringing the miseries of war to the doors of the unoffending!
Yet men are never weary of sailing to and fro upon it, and most of the
cities of the present time are upon its shore. And in the evening we
walk by the beach, and from the rising grounds look over the waters, as
if to gaze upon their loveliness were reward to us for the labour of the
day.

Part II

WILD ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

SIR FELIX

On a bright May morning, the sunlight, at five o'clock, was pouring into
a room which face the east at the ancestral home of the Aquilas. In this
room Felix, the eldest of the three sons of the Baron, was sleeping. The
beams passed over his head, and lit up a square space on the opposite
whitewashed wall, where, in the midst of the brilliant light, hung an
ivory cross. There were only two panes of glass in the window, each no
more than two or three inches square, the rest of the window being
closed by strong oaken shutters, thick enough to withstand the stroke of
an arrow.

In the daytime one of these at least would have been thrown open to
admit air and light. They did not quite meet, and