Weevil shuffled out. He was in a restless mood. He knew he ought to tell Boodles that she mustn't be happy, only he could not. Somebody or something would have to use her as she had used the clock; blow wildly into her poor little soul, and do for her in two minutes what Weevil would never have done in two years. CHAPTER VIII ABOUT ATMOSPHERE There are secret places among the rocks of Tavy Cleave. The river has many moods; one time in the barren lands, another time in bogland, and then in hanging gardens and woodland. No other river displays such startling Protean changes. The artist always fails to catch the Tavy. He paints it winding between low banks of peat, with blossoms of pink heather dripping into the water; but that is not the Tavy. He presents it as a broiling milk-white torrent, thundering over rocks, with Ger Tor wrapped in cloud, and bronzed bracken springing out of the clefts; but that is not the Tavy. He represents it shaded with rowan and ferns, its banks a fairy carpet of wind-flowers, and suggests a gentle river by removing the lace-like pattern of foam and the big boulders, and painting the water a wonderful green, with here and there a streak of purple; but still he has not caught the Tavy. He goes down from the moor and shows a stately stream, descending slowly a lew valley between hills, partly wooded, partly cultivated; shows the smoke of scattered Bartons mixing lazily with the clouds and going with them sea-ward; shows cattle feeding and bluebells nodding; a general atmosphere that of Amaryllis and her piping shepherd, though the lad is only a dull clod and his pipe is of clay, and Amaryllis has dirty finger-nails; but again the elusive Tavy has escaped somehow. Once more he tries. There is the Tavy, like an ocean flood, coming across mud-flats, mingled with brother Tamar of the border; a dull unromantic Tavy then. The magic mist of bluebells has given way to the blue steel of the railroad, and wooden battleships, their task over, float upon its waters instead of fern-fronds. Not a fairy-tale is to be told, nor any pretty fancy to be weaved there. The pictures go into galleries, and win fame, perhaps; but the river of Tavy chuckles over his rocks, and knows he is not there. It is a river of atmosphere. Only a dream can produce the Tavy; not the written word, nor the painted picture. Unpleasant dreams some of them, like nightmares, but human thought produces them; and human thought is the dirtiest, as well as the noblest, thing created.