Then, just as sometimes the flowing of the Dapple was reflected in the trunks of the beeches that grew on its banks, so that an element that looked as if it were half water, half light, seemed rippling down them in ceaseless zones--so did the objects he saw beneath him begin to be reflected in fancies, rippling down the hard, unyielding fabric of his woe; the red-roofed houses scattered about the side of the hill looked as if they were crowding helter-skelter to the harbour, eager to turn ships themselves and sail away--a flock of clumsy ducks on a lake of swans; the houses beyond the harbour seemed to be preening themselves preparatory to having their portrait taken. The chimneys were casting becoming velvet shadows on the high-pitched slanting roofs. The belfries seemed to be standing on tiptoe behind the houses--like tall serving lads, who, unbeknown to their masters, have succeeded in squeezing themselves into the family group. Or, perhaps, the houses were more like a flock of barn-door fowls, of different shapes and sizes, crowding up at the hen wife's "Chick! chick! chick!" to be fed at sunset. Anyhow, however innocent they might look, they were the repositories of whatever dark secrets Lud might contain. Houses counted among the Silent People. Walls have ears, but no tongue. Houses, trees, the dead--they tell no tales. His eye travelled beyond the town to the country that lay beyond, and rested on the fields of poppies and golden stubble, the smoke of distant hamlets, the great blue ribbon of the Dawl, the narrow one of the Dapple--one coming from the north, one from the west, but, for some miles beyond Lud-in-the-Mist, seeming to flow in parallel lines, so that their convergence at the harbour struck one as a geometrical miracle. Once more he began to feel the balm of silent things, and seemed to catch a glimpse of that still, quiet landscape the future, after he himself had died. And yet ... there was that old superstition of the thraldom in Fairyland, the labour in the fields of gillyflowers. No, no. Old Ebeneezor Spike was not a thrall in Fairyland. * * * * * He left the Fields of Grammary in a gentler mood of melancholy than the frost-bound despair in which he had gone there. When he got home he found Dame Marigold sitting dejectedly in the parlour, her hands lying limply on her lap, and she had had the fire already lighted although evening had not yet set in. She was very white, and there were violet shadows under her eyes. Master Nathaniel stood silently at the door for a few seconds watching her. There came into his head the lines of an old song of Dorimare:-- I'll weaver her a wreath of the flowers of grief That her beauty may show the brighter.