"Nodding flowers, and tender grass, Bend and let the lady pass! Lighter than the south-wind straying, In the spring, o'er leaves decaying, Seeking for his ardent kisses One small flower that he misses, Will I press your snowy bosoms, Dainty, darling little blossoms!" Singing thus, she descended a little hill, and, gliding round its base, disappeared under a thick grape-vine that swung across it from two lofty elms on either side. A spider in conscious security had woven his web across the archway formed by the drooping festoons of the vine; the untrodden path was overgrown with moss. Haguna lifted up the vine and passed under, beckoning Anthrops to follow. He heard her still singing,-- "Quick unclasp your tendrils clinging, Stealthily the trees enringing! I have learnt your wily secret: I will use it, I shall keep it! Cunning spider, cease your spinning! My web boasts the best beginning. Yours is wan and pale and ashen: After no such lifeless fashion Mine is woven. Golden sunbeams Prisoned in its meshes, light gleams From its shadowest recesses. Tell me, spider, made you ever Web so strong no knife could sever Woven of a maiden's tresses?" On the other side of the viny curtain, Anthrops discovered the entrance to a large cavern hollowed out in a rock. The cavern was carpeted with the softest moss of the most variegated shades, ranging from faintest green to a rich golden brown. The rocky walls were of considerable height, and curved gracefully around the ample space,--a woodland apartment. But the most remarkable feature in the grotto was a rose-colored cloud, that seemed to have been imprisoned in the farther end, and, in its futile efforts to escape, shifted perpetually into strange, fantastic figures. Now, the massive form of the Israelitish giant appeared lying at the feet of the Philistine damsel; anon, the kingly shoulders of the swift-footed Achilles towered helplessly above the heads of the island girls. The noble head of Marcus Antoninus bowed in disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light Beatrice; the sister of Honorius, from the throne of half the world, saluted the sister of Theodosius, grasping the sceptre of the other half in her slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically represented by the rapid configurations of this strange vapor.