ht and the mile-long
shadows. To one who had passed a miserable night, the freshness of that
hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon his slumbering
fellows, to be the Adam of the coming day, composed and fortified his
spirits; and the Prince, breathing deep and pausing as he went, walked in
the wet fields beside his shadow, and was glad.

A trellised path led down into the valley of the brook, and he turned to
follow it. The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland river. Hard by
the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick grey-mare's tail of
twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and bubbled in a lynn. Into
the middle of this quaking pool a rock protruded, shelving to a cape; and
thither Otto scrambled and sat down to ponder.

Soon the sun struck through the screen of branches and thin early leaves
that made a hanging bower above the fall; and the golden lights and
flitting shadows fell upon and marbled the surface of that so seething
pot; and rays plunged deep among the turning waters; and a spark, as
bright as a diamond, lit upon the swaying eddy. It began to grow warm
where Otto lingered, warm and heady; the lights swam, weaving their maze
across the shaken pool; on the impending rock, reflections danced like
butterflies; and the air was fanned by the waterfall as by a swinging
curtain.

Otto, who was weary with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of
remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that
sun-chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a
drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among
uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external bearing
of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following liquid laws,
with which a river contends among obstructions. It seems the very play
of man and destiny, and as Otto pored on these recurrent changes, he
grew, by equal steps, the sleepier and the more profound. Eddy and
Prince were alike jostled in their purpose, alike anchored by intangible
influences in one corner of the world. Eddy and Prince were alike
useless, starkly useless, in the cosmology of men. Eddy and
Prince--Prince and Eddy.

It is probable he had been some while asleep when a voice recalled him
from oblivion. 'Sir,' it was saying; and looking round, he saw Mr.
Killian's daughter, terrified by her boldness and making bashful signals
from the shore. She was a plain, honest lass, healthy and happy