Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/153

 were fish theretrout playing in the whirlpools and riding swiftly with the current. She found some odd bright stones and gleaming pebbles in this mysterious place, silent save for the deadened rush of water.

Sometimes, again, the rushing brook took such steep course that Eepersip was forced to make a detour into the woods for a little way, through clumps of the firs, now growing less stunted, but hung with icicles which clicked together in the wind, sounding to Eepersip like fairy castanets. Even at this high altitude, she saw occasionally a white pine, each cluster of pale green needles laden with snowtufts of snow which seemed to make little faces peering out from the tree. Bursts of happiness would overwhelm her now and then, and she would leap high and dart like some frightened deer or mountain nymph.

Once she found beautiful little violet-shaped pink flowers with bowed heads and feathery leavessnow-pinks blooming there, thrusting their buds from the snow itself. She tucked a spray of them into her dress of fluttering ferns.

And then she would return to the river and follow it again. When the moon came, dappling the foamy water with silver, she watched it as it dipped down its forehead in the stream and