Part 1 (2/2)

_Still thou art blest compared wi' me!_

--ROBERT BURNS.

It is to be wondered at that in so bleak a wind I could possibly fall into reverie. But the habit was rooted deep in me; Rosinante was prosaic and trustworthy; the country for miles around familiar to me as the palm of my hand. Yet so deeply was I involved, and so steadily had we journeyed on, that when at last I lifted my eyes with a great sigh that was almost a sob, I found myself in a place utterly unknown to me.

But more inexplicable yet, not only was the place strange, but, by some incredible wizardry, Rosinante seemed to have carried me out of a March morning, blue and tumultuous and bleak, into the grey, sweet mist of a midsummer dawn.

I found that we were ambling languidly on across a green and level moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.

On I went, heedless, curious, marvelling; my only desire to press forward to the goal whereto destiny was directing me. I suppose after this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.

She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed, something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light, insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to turn aside. Even Rosinante p.r.i.c.ked forward her ears, and stooped her gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.

”Is there any path here, little girl, that I may follow?” I said.

”No path at all,” she answered.

”But how then do strangers find their way across the moor?” I said.

She debated with herself a moment. ”Some by the stars, and some by the moon,” she answered.

”By the moon!” I cried. ”But at day, what then?”

”Oh, then, sir,” she said, ”they can see.”

I could not help laughing at her demure little answers. ”Why!” I exclaimed, ”what a worldly little woman! And what is your name?”

”They call me Lucy Gray,” she said, looking up into my face. I think my heart almost ceased to beat.

”Lucy Gray!” I repeated.

”Yes,” she said most seriously, as if to herself, ”in all this snow.”

”'Snow,'” I said--”this is dewdrops s.h.i.+ning, not snow.”

She looked at me without flinching. ”How else can mother see how I am lost?” she said.

”Why!” said I, ”how else?” not knowing how to reach her bright belief.

”And what are those thick woods called over there?”

She shook her head. ”There is no name,” she said.

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