The
silence was so intense that one thought of the fairy-books of long
ago, of sleeping woods and haunted castles; there were the castles on
islands lying in misted water, faint as dreams. Now and then a bird
uttered a piercing little chatter from the branches of the tall
larches, and ducks talked in the reeds, but their talk was only a soft
murmur, hardly louder than the rustle of the reeds now in full leaf.
Everything was spellbound that day; the shadows of reed and island
seemed fixed for ever as in a magic mirror--a mirror that somebody had
breathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water about
the limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad
monotony.
The lake curves inland, forming a pleasant bay among the woods; there
is a sandy spit where some pines have found roothold, and they live on
somehow despite the harsh sallies of the wind in winter. Along the
shore dead reeds lie in rows three feet deep among the rushes; had
they been placed there by hand they could not have been placed with
more regularity; and there is an old cart-track, with hawthorns
growing out of a tumbled wall. The hillside is planted--beautiful
beeches and hollies at one end, and at the other some lawny
interspaces with tall larches swaying tasselled branches shedding
faint shadows.
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