Sir Roland loved his daughter’s quick bright turns of love, and filial passion when her heart was really moved. A thousand complex moods and longings played around or pierced her then; yet all controlled, or at least concealed, by an English lady’s quietude. Alice was so like himself, that he always knew what she would think; and he tried his best to follow the zigzag flash of feminine feeling. “My dear child,” he said at last: “something has been too much for you. Perhaps that foolish fellow’s story of this mysterious water. A gross exaggeration, doubtless. The finny tribe fast sticking by the gills in the nest of the wood-pigeon. Marry come up! Let us see these wonders. The moon is at the full to-night; and I hear no rain on the windows now. Go and fetch my crabstick, darling.” “Oh, may I come with you, papa? Do say yes. I shall lie awake all night, unless I go. The moon is sure to clear the storm off; and I will wrap up so thoroughly.” “But you cannot wrap up your feet, dear child; and the roads are continually flooded now.” “Not on the chalk, papa; never on the chalk, except in the very hollow places. Besides, I will put on my new French clogs. They can’t be much less than six inches thick. I shall stand among the deluge high enough for the fish to build their nests on me.” “Daughter of folly, and no child of mine, go and put your clogs on. We will go out at the eastern door, to arouse no curiosity.” As the master and his daughter passed beneath the astrologer’s tower, and left the house by his private entrance, they could not help thinking of the good old prince, and his kind anxiety about them. To the best of their knowledge, the wise Agasicles had never heard of the Woeburn; or perhaps his mind had been so much engrossed with the comet that he took no heed of it. And even in his time, this strange river was legendary as the Hydaspes. After the heavy and tempestuous rain, the night was fair, as it generally is, even in the worst of weather, when the full moon rises. The long-chained hill, with its level outline stretching towards the south of east, afforded play for the glancing light of a watery and laborious moon. Long shadows, laid in dusky bars, or cast in heavy masses where the hollow land prevailed for them, and misty columns hovering and harbouring over tree-clumps, and gleams of quiet light pursuing avenues of opening--all of these, at every step of deep descent, appeared to flicker like a great flag waving. “What a very lovely night! How beautifully the clouds lie!” cried Alice, being apt to kindle rashly into poetry: “they softly put themselves in rows, and then they float towards the moon, and catch the silver of her smile--oh, why do they do that, papa?” “Because the wind is west, my dear. Take care; you are on a great flint I fear. You are always cutting your boots out.” “No, papa, no. I have got you this time. That shows how much you attend to me. I have got my great French clogs on.”