As soon as tea is over we prowl over the rockinesses of the little island, and creep among the hazels and pines and tiny oaks and undergrowth. Do you know trees never look so beautiful as when you get peeps of blue water between their fluttering leaves? When we have picked our way through to the other end, we climb upon a high rock with a flat top to it, and heather growing in its crevices; and here we lie, torpid after our tea, and pretend that we are viking-folk from the north who have forced our way here by land and sea, and are looking for the first time upon a lake that no one knew before us. The Imp tells us a story of how he fought with a red-haired warrior, and how they both fell backwards into the sea, and how he killed the other man dead, and then came home to change his wet clothes, long, long ago in the white north. And the Elf, not to be beaten, has her story, too, how she rode on a dragon one night and saw the lake--this very lake--far away beneath her, like a shining shield with a blue island boss in the middle of it. And how the fiery dragon flapped down so that she could pick a scrap of heather from the island, and how here was the very heather that she picked. And then I tell them stories, too, of the old times, when the great fires were lit on the crests of the hills, as warning signals to people far away. And so the time slips away, and we suddenly find that we are ready to row on again to have just one peep at the river. All round the low end of the lake there are tall reeds growing and bulrushes, and there is soft marshy ground that make damp islets among the reeds. As we row down we are nearly sure to see one or two big white birds with proud necks swimming slowly along the reeds. Sometimes we have seen them rise into the air with a great whirring of wings and splashing of water, and then sink again on the surface of the lake, beating up a long mane of foam as they fall. These are the swans, and on one of the islets in the reeds they have a nest; more than once, when I have been here earlier in the year, I have seen the mother swan sitting white and stately on her home, and then the little grey cygnets break out of the eggs and swim with their parents, looking so fluffy and dirty and odd that the Imp and Elf can hardly believe that some day they will turn out to be tall swans like the big white birds they love, who swim through the water like the ships of a fairy queen. [Illustration]