V

_How should I your true love know
From another one?_

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.


But even then she was difficult finding, so cunningly had ivy and
blackberry and bindweed woven snares for the trespasser's foot.

But at last--not far from where we had parted--I found her, a pillar
of smoke in the first shining of the moon. She turned large,
smouldering eyes on me, her mane in elf locks, her flanks heaving and
wet, her forelock frizzed like a colt's. Yet she showed only pleasure
at seeing me, and so evident a desire to unburden the day's history,
that I almost wished I might be Balaam awhile, and she--Dapple!

It would be idle to attempt to ride through these thick, glimmering
brakes. The darkness was astir. And as the moon above the valley
brightened, casting pale beams upon the folded roses and drooping
branches, if populous dream did not deceive me, a tiny multitude was
afoot in the undergrowth--small horns winding, wee tapers burning.

Presently as with Rosinante's nose at my shoulder we pushed slowly
forward, a nightingale burst close against my ear into so passionate a
descant I thought I should be gooseflesh to the end of my days.

The heedless tumult of her song seemed to give courage to sounds and
voices much fainter. Soon a lovelit rival in some distant thicket