om here pervaded all things. The
trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing
themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of
mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the
cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and
thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow,
and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although
over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade
of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself
therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied
that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself
sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by
the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking
the place of their predecessors thus entombed.

This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I
lost myself forthwith in revery. "If ever island were enchanted," said
I to myself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who
remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?--or do
they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying,
do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by
little, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow,
exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to
the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys
upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?"

As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to
rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing
upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the
sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a
quick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, while
I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays
about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness
from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect
in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an
oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude
seemed indicative of joy--but sorrow deformed it as she passed within
the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at