I knew well that it was all there; for much had I studied this pool in
the day-time, trying to learn the secret of it; many hours I had spent
there, happy with a kind of happiness, because forgetful of the past. And
even now, could I not hear the wind going through those trees, as it
never went through any trees before or since? could I not see gleams of
the dismal moor? could I not hear those reeds just taken by the wind,
knocking against each other, the flat ones scraping all along the round
ones? Could I not hear, moreover, the slow trickling of the land-springs
through the clay banks?

The cold, chill horror of the place was too much for me; I had never been
there by night before, nobody had for quite a long time, and now to come
on such a night! If there had been any moon, the place would have looked
more as it did by day; besides, the moon shining on water is always so
beautiful, on any water even: if it had been starlight, one could have
looked at the stars and thought of the time when those fields were
fertile and beautiful (for such a time was, I am sure), when the cowslips
grew among the grass, and when there was promise of yellow-waving corn
stained with poppies; that time which the stars had seen, but which we
had never seen, which even they would never see again--past time!

Ah! what was that which touched my shoulder?--Yes, I see, only a dead
leaf.--Yes, to be here on this eighth of May too of all nights in the
year, the night of that awful day when ten years ago I slew him, not
undeservedly, God knows, yet how dreadful it was!--Another leaf! and
another!--Strange, those trees have been dead this hundred years, I
should think. How sharp the wind is too, just as if I were moving along
and meeting it;--why, I _am_ moving! what then, I am not there after all;
where am I then? there are the trees; no, they are freshly-planted oak
saplings, the very ones that those withered last-year's leaves were blown