The fishing lights their dances And come, I sung, my true love! Come hasten home to me. But the sea it fell a-moaning, And the white gulls rocked thereon, And the young moon dropt from heaven, And the lights hid one by one. All silently their glances Slipt down the cruel sea, And wait! cried the night and wind and storm, By what sudden change accomplished he knew not, nor was he at all astonished thereat, when instead of the bars of music he was aware of a still picture of low-country life. A canal sweeping its umberous waters slowly onward through banks lined with the green sunshine of early willows, and down toward a low stone bridge whose twin arches spanned the turbid flow and broke it, ere reaching the narrow pier, into numerous long ripples. Beyond, the country was one level expanse, clothed in the vivid pestilential green of fens and marshes, and above, a calm sky belted at the horizon with a low, brilliant west. Leaning over the bridge, a female figure tall and lithe, clad in some sober gray, her white cap hanging by its ribbons down one shoulder, and her dark unbraided hair blowing in long tresses against the zone of sunset; in her hand a bunch of reeds, which she trailed in the broken ripples. So exact the lines of this Flemish picture, that Sir Rohan saw clearly defined the black shadow which fine separate lashes threw over large gray eyes, and the delicate confusion of palest olive and ruddiest peach upon the oval cheek. The presence at a distance of another person, a dark, slender youth with arrested attention, Sir Rohan felt rather than saw, although he caught the glitter of a ring of curious device upon the latter's hand, and felt certain that the eyes of the two had met, when through her parted lips he heard, as if for the first time, the tune dreamily trilling,— I went plucking purple pansies Till my love should come to shore. And the long gray ripples, growing fainter and darker, seemed to murmur responsively, as they swept onward with divided currents, — - Wait! cried the night and wind and storm, Wait, till I come to thee! How quickly the night fell on this scene, nor by what means the low-country canal became a narrow rural lane winding between high stone walls, over which luxuriant hops clambered and hung their blossoming sprays and bunches of greenery on the other side, Sir Rohan did not pause to consider. Nor did he wonder at seeing the soberly-clad girl wandering lingeringly down its avenue, arm in arm with the shadowy youth, till some great bars opposed their progress; nor, as she mounted the stile beside them, did he wonder at seeing the ring of curious device shining, this time, on her hand, nor at the utterly happy gleam from her loving eyes as she turned to him standing below and holding a little bunch of violets and rue that had lain in her breast. An indistinct sorrow stole over Sir Rohan as he saw the head crowned with its royal braid, the face with its sunshine and beauty, the whole vignette, recede and fade away to somberest mist, leaving nothing but the bars growing more and more distant, while gigantic notes of light started into flashes on their surface and thundered the old melody through his bewildered ears. There succeeded an interval of serenest rest, ere into Sir Rohan's dream quietly stole the same figures again,—the same, yet different. The quiet gown, the simple cap, were gone; the lady trailed rustling satins over whose majestic folds the gloss of golden intricacies of needlework sparkled and deadened as she walked. Jewels, which might be the heirlooms of untainted ancestry, lay on her bare white bosom and encircled her brow, and the ring of curious device still flashed on her snowy hand. Her eyes, glowing with passion, bent on the face of her companion as they wound slowly up the outer turret stair in a broad dash of moonlight, his arm supporting her waist and his eyes meeting her own. Around them lay a different landscape. Long sweeps of moors, dun and dark, like petrified sea-swells; mountains distantly grand and shadowy; a mighty river lapsing down to meet its bridge of a hundred arches, and its flickering silver masts; the ocean clamoring his eternal sorrow from winedark depths, and with white, speechless lips of angry froth forever lapping the cliffs and crags far up along the northward. But the dreamer feels that the lovers see none but each other, and as the old tune creeps up from gulfs of silence, he sees the youth gaze for a moment inland over those dim hills, and hum half to himself: "En un verde prado Con otros pastores, Que apenas creyera Que fuese vaquera Do la Finojosa !" A breathless, silent rapture seemed stealing over this part of Sir Rohan's dream, as if he himself were an actor of its wordless drama, an inner intense glee, to which he had perhaps been alien for many years. Let us believe that in the dream, as in life, this moment of joy found its equivalent of pain. While he paused to turn it over in his thought, and extract the last sweet relish of its flavor, the illusive phantasmagoria existed no longer; and when next the tide of sleep thinned itself, he saw a long, low-browed room, wainscoted in oak, uncarpeted, and fitted with furniture of an antique pattern. One only window lighted it,—a Gothic oval, and unglazed, so that the vines and sweet-briers, climbing without, twisted their ten |