Even the deepest, darkest water (not, of course, muddy) yields after a
while to the eye. Half close the eyelids, and while gazing into it let
your intelligence rather wait upon the corners of the eye than on the
glance you cast straight forward. For some reason when thus gazing the
edge of the eye becomes exceedingly sensitive, and you are conscious of
slight motions or of a thickness--not a defined object, but a thickness
which indicates an object--which is otherwise quite invisible.

The slow feeling sway of a fish's tail, the edges of which curl over and
grasp the water, may in this manner be identified without being
positively seen, and the dark outline of its body known to exist against
the equally dark water or bank. Shift, too, your position according to
the fall of the light, just as in looking at a painting. From one point
of view the canvas shows little but the presence of paint and blurred
colour, from another at the side the picture stands out.

Sometimes the water can be seen into best from above, sometimes by lying
on the sward, now by standing back a little way, or crossing to the
opposite shore. A spot where the sunshine sparkles with dazzling gleam
is perhaps perfectly inpenetrable till you get the other side of the
ripple, when the same rays that just now baffled the glance light up the
bottom as if thrown from a mirror for the purpose. I convinced myself
that there was nothing here, nothing visible at present--not so much as
a stickleback.

Yet the stream ran clear and sweet, and deep in places. It was too broad
for leaping over. Down the current sedges grew thickly at a curve: up
the stream the young flags were rising; it had an inhabited look, if
such a term may be used, and moorhens and water-rats were about but no