would lie for an hour by the side of a hill-streamlet; he would stand
gazing into a muddy pool, left on the road by last night's rain. Once, in
such a brown-yellow pool, he beheld a glory--the sun, encircled with a
halo vast and wide, varied like the ring of opal colours seen about the
moon when she floats through white clouds, only larger and brighter than
that. Looking up, he could see nothing but a chaos of black clouds,
brilliant towards the sun: the colours he could not see, except in the
muddy water.

"In autumn the rains would come down for days, and the river grow stormy,
forget its clearness, and spread out like a lake over the meadows; and
that was delightful indeed. But greater yet was the delight when the
foot-bridge was carried away; for then they had to cross the stream in a
boat. He longed for water where it could not be; would fain have seen it
running through the grass in front of his father's house; and had a waking
vision of a stream with wooden shores that babbled through his bedroom. So
it may be fancied with what delight he overheard the parental decision
that they should spend some weeks by the shores of the great world--water,
the father and the grave of rivers.

"After many vain outlooks, and fruitless inquiries of their driver, a
sudden turn in the road brought them in sight of the sea between the
hills; itself resembling a low blue hill, covered with white stones.
Indeed, the little girl only doubted whether those were white stones or
sheep scattered all over it. They lost sight of it; saw it again; and
hailed it with greater rapture than at first.

"The sun was more than halfway down when they arrived. They had secured a
little cottage, almost on the brow of the high shore, which in most places
went down perpendicularly to the beach or sands, and in some right into