the mossy bole of the fork, and an arm round one of the branches.
From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected
in the pool, which, from its bank, was but a mass of darkness. The
first time she reclined in this manner, her heart beat audibly; in
time she lay down as calmly as on the mountain heather; the
perception of the sublime was probably heightened by an
intermingled sense of danger; and perhaps that indifference to
life, which early disappointment forces upon sensitive minds, was
necessary to the first experiment. There was, in the novelty and
strangeness of the position, an excitement which never wholly
passed away, but which became gradually subordinate to the
influence, at once tranquillising and elevating, of the mingled
eternity of motion, sound, and solitude.

One sultry noon, she descended into this retreat with a mind more
than usually disturbed by reflections on the past. She lay in her
favourite position, sometimes gazing on the cataract; looking
sometimes up the steep sylvan acclivities, into the narrow space of
the cloudless ether; sometimes down into the abyss of the pool, and
the deep bright-blue reflections that opened another immensity
below her. The distressing recollections of the morning, the world
and all its littlenesses, faded from her thoughts like a dream; but
her wounded and wearied spirit drank in too deeply the
tranquillising power of the place, and she dropped asleep upon the
tree like a ship-boy on the mast.

At this moment Mr. Chainmail emerged into daylight, on a projection
of the opposite rock, having struck down through the woods in
search of unsophisticated scenery. The scene he discovered filled
him with delight: he seated himself on the rock, and fell into one