There was a river and waterfall like well-combed hair in the middle, and
a dozen leaden mountains lying about
with--apparently--pocket-handkerchiefs on their tops, and a
dropsical-looking stag drinking. "I can't imagine," insisted Richard,
"that there could be a more beautiful picture than that, but perhaps it
appeals to me specially because father and mother and I so often talk
about the place together--the place like that, near to the mountain
where I was born. That was in the Rockies, you know, and just below our
mountain I am sure there was a canyon like that--I dream of it--with
milky-green water running under and over and round the most
extraordinary shapes of ice, and cactuses like green hedgehogs in the
crevices of the rocks, and great untidy pine-trees clinging to an ounce
of earth on an inch of flat surface. And the rocks are a most splendid
rose-red, and lie in steep layers, and break out into shapes that are so
deliberate, they look as if they must mean something. Indeed they
do...."

A stave played by a 'cello called them to supper, and, as they returned
to the hall, a burst of earnest music from the whole orchestra partially
drowned the clap of thunder that again marked Richard's passage through
the door. Sarah Brown felt sure that Lady Arabel arranged this on
purpose. The wizard's mother obviously had great difficulty in not
noticing the phenomena connected with her son, and she wore a striving
smile and a look of glassy and well-bred unconsciousness whenever
anything magic happened.

At the end of the hall the orchestra, arranged neatly in a crescent, was
busily employing its violins in a unanimous melody of so rude and
destructive a nature that it seemed as if every string must be broken.
This mania spread until even the outlying bassoons, triangles, and