They had swept over, in rapt silence for the last few moments, until they lay beneath the very brow of the eastern mountain. Then that silence was broken by the boatman rising from his seat and blowing a long, steady blast on his six-foot tin horn, in size and shape like those used on the Western canals, but sadly dinted by careless use and frequent falling. The company were reminded, then, that they were floating on Echo Lake and no stream of the land of faerie. The long, low note died on the car, and an appreciable instant of silence followed. Then it came back from the brow of the mountain above, a little louder than before, and yet a little mellowed by distance. Another instant, and the same sound reverberated from the opposite hill, the back of Eagle Cliff. Were there still more echoes to be added to the two that had already made the place notable? Yes, a third came back from the range that sloped away from the head of the Lake, northward--a little fainter, and broken now; and then the more distant hills caught the sound, as if each had a right, which it jealously claimed, to some portion of that greeting from the human breath; and far as the eye could trace the blue peaks rising behind each other through the gaps beyond, the ear could catch a corresponding reverberation, fainter--fainter--fainter,--till it died away in a drowsy murmur and silence followed. Then the horn passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, some of the gallants perhaps forming kisses of the touch of red lips which had preceded theirs; and some blew round, full strains that awakened admiration, and some made but a melancholy whistle which excited merry laughter. Among the many experiments tried upon that horn, there must have been some horrid discords startling the Dryads in the wooded shades up the mountain, where the gazers sometimes seemed to see the echo leaping from cliff to cliff and from bough to bough. But they soon came willingly back to the practised notes of the boatman; and some of the party shut their eyes and dreamed, as his quick, sharp peals rang merrily up among the hills,--of noble lord and gentle lady, hunting in the days of old, and of the bugle blasts of outlaws sounding through gloomy Ardennes or merry Sherwood. Anon he would end his strain with a long, low falling note, and they heard some old cathedral hymn wailing through solemn arches and bending the spirit to reverence and prayer. But through all that succession of sounds the hard, dry, practical, exigeant Present was rolled away and the romantic, easy Past stood in its stead; so easily does the mind, like the body, cast off its burthen, whenever permitted, and lie down, if only for a moment, upon the lap of indolence!