Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/440

 borders and yet brighter flower-fantasies in newer unfolding beauty.

For lo! in this region of glamour and the long-lost kingdom of the sorcerer, the wandering knight has fallen upon a fresh enchantment. Proudest of all the engineering triumphs, the prize must be accorded to the lakelet which glitters in the lower grounds. How the calm water sleeps beneath the heavy foliage of the farther shore! How the shadows reflect the tracery of the willow tresses, the feathery shafts of the bamboo clump! How freshly green the bordering turf! There is even an island and a wooded promontory. More than all or do my eyes deceive me? a shallop, light as that in which

By my halidome! stands she not therein the—'Ladye of the Lake' herself,—fair as her prototype, though modernly arrayed, gracefully poising her light oar. With a smile that might lure an archangel she beckons us to embark with her on this magical mirrored water, under the charmed shadows of the golden summer eve.

Surely all this is a dream. It cannot be but illusion. We shall wake on the morrow, or next week at the farthest, to feel again the hot dust-blast as we ride across the desert plain at midnight, to mark the red moon glaring wrathfully upon the pale-hued, ghostly myall tree, that sighs despair amid the death-stricken waste.

Even so. Yet let us dream on and be happy, if but for a little space. Glide smoothly, O bark; shine tenderly, O stars, soft glimmering through the o'erhanging, rustling leafage; fan this sun-bronzed cheek, O whispering breeze, this careworn brow, till each fevered pulse be cooled. Short is our mortal span at most. How weary distant the ever-lengthening goal! But wherever Fate may guide, however stern the fray, how faint soe'er our footsteps in the onward march, this fair remembrance shall have power to refresh and reanimate our soul.

Yet another joy ere the evening, bright with songs and music, with cheerful converse and pleasant reminiscence,