reclining under summer leaves, speak as we speak of hydras and unicorns,
and things in fable.

On, on swelled the mellow, mellow, witching music; and now the worn man
with his secret sorrow, and the boy with his frank glad laugh, are
passing away, side by side, over the turf, with its starry and golden
wild-flowers, under the boughs in yon Druid copse, from which they start
the ringdove,--farther and farther, still side by side, now out of sight,
as if the dense green of the summer had closed around them like waves.
But still the flute sounds on, and still they hear it, softer and softer
as they go. Hark! do you not hear it--you?




CHAPTER XIV.

There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to
the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the
ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet
true to their own laws, potent in their own influences. Philosophy
speculates on their effects, and disputes upon their uses; men who
do not philosophize regard them as special messengers and bodes of
evil.

They came out of the little park into a by-lane; a vast tract of common
land, yellow with furze and undulated with swell and hollow, spreading in
front; to their right the dark beechwoods, still beneath the weight of
the July noon. Lionel had been talking about the "Faerie Queene,"
knight-errantry, the sweet impossible dream-life that, safe from Time,