cloister and its tributary villages had fallen, owing to the
extraordinary floods. After a long and wearisome wandering, on
account of the rise of the waters, he had been this day compelled
toward evening to procure the aid of a couple of boatmen, and cross
over an arm of the lake which had burst its usual boundary.

"But hardly," continued he, "had our small ferry-boat touched the
waves, when that furious tempest burst forth which is still raging
over our heads. It seemed as if the billows had been waiting our
approach only to rush on us with a madness the more wild. The oars
were wrested from the grasp of my men in an instant; and shivered by
the resistless force, they drove farther and farther out before us
upon the waves. Unable to direct our course, we yielded to the blind
power of nature, and seemed to fly over the surges toward your
distant shore, which we already saw looming through the mist and foam
of the deep. Then it was at last that our boat turned short from its
course, and rocked with a motion that became more wild and dizzy: I
know not whether it was overset, or the violence of the motion threw
me overboard. In my agony and struggle at the thought of a near and
terrible death, the waves bore me onward, till I was cast ashore here
beneath the trees of your island."

"Yes, an island!" cried the fisherman; "a short time ago it was only
a point of land. But now, since the forest stream and lake have
become all but mad, it appears to be entirely changed."

"I observed something of it," replied the priest, "as I stole along
the shore in the obscurity; and hearing nothing around me but a sort
of wild uproar, I perceived at last that the noise came from a point
exactly where a beaten footpath disappeared. I now caught the light