freshness of that hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon
his slumbering fellows, to be the Adam of the coming day, composed
and fortified his spirits; and the Prince, breathing deep and
pausing as he went, walked in the wet fields beside his shadow, and
was glad.

A trellised path led down into the valley of the brook, and he
turned to follow it. The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland
river. Hard by the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick
grey-mare's tail of twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and
bubbled in a lynn. Into the middle of this quaking pool a rock
protruded, shelving to a cape; and thither Otto scrambled and sat
down to ponder.

Soon the sun struck through the screen of branches and thin early
leaves that made a hanging bower above the fall; and the golden
lights and flitting shadows fell upon and marbled the surface of
that so seething pot; and rays plunged deep among the turning
waters; and a spark, as bright as a diamond, lit upon the swaying
eddy. It began to grow warm where Otto lingered, warm and heady;
the lights swam, weaving their maze across the shaken pool; on the
impending rock, reflections danced like butterflies; and the air was
fanned by the waterfall as by a swinging curtain.

Otto, who was weary with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of
remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that sun-
chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a
drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among
uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external
bearing of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following