into
it!" and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
flowed--the whole dale was a well.

The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: "We
drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
we whistle and we sing; it is our own song--and it is quite new!"

Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday--but it was the same, ever
the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Zaether
Dale is, that she had washed herself!

THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND.

* * * * *

Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us--nay, it
even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
these flowers are now withered in the grave?

It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
something about the young daughter--I knew not myself what it was--but
I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
short northern summer.

They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
and then flies away alone and so