sedges.

The bell of an unseen church a long way off sounded the mid-day angelus,
and told that we had not drifted so far as it appeared from the peopled
world. Leaving the reeds, we passed again into the shade of alders that
stretched their gnarled, fantastic roots far over the babbling or dreaming
water, and thence again amongst the sunny reeds. And so the hours went by,
and there were no villages, or even houses, to be seen, but the little
rough mills beside the slowly toiling wheel, which in most cases seemed to
be the only living thing there. Once, however, there was a naked child,
very brown, and as round as a spider between the hips and the waist,
playing upon a flowery bank above the mother, who wore a brilliant-coloured
kerchief on her head, and who knelt beside the water as she rinsed the
little elfs shirt. I thought the picture pretty enough to make a note of
it. This caused some contemptuous surprise to my companion in the back of
the boat--not yet alive to the innocent cunning of the artist and writer,
for he asked me, in the descriptive language of the British schoolboy:

'Are you going to stick down _that?_'

On we went, turning and turning, gliding into nooks that seemed each more
charming than the other, and having a constant succession of delightful
surprises, interrupted only by the mill-dams, which were distressingly
frequent.

The hot hours stole away or passed into the mellowness of evening, and the
marsh-mallows that fringed the stream were looking coolly white when
we drew near to Riberac. The water widened and deepened, and we met a
pleasure-boat, vast and gaudy, recalling some picture of Queen Elizabeth's
barge on the Thames. Under an awning sat a bevy of ladies in bright