I turned off the lights, and then the lake lured me back to a last glimpse of its wild, eerie beauty. Again I flung on my robe and sat at the window. It seemed as if I couldn’t leave it. The black, sinister water, the dark shores, with deep hollows here and there, the waving, soughing trees, with thick underbrush beneath them, all seemed possessed of a spirit of evil, a frightful, uncanny spirit, that made me shiver with an unreasonable apprehension, that held me in thrall. I have no use for premonitions, I have no faith in presentiments, but I had to admit to myself then a fear, a foreboding of some intangible, ghastly horror. Then would come the moonlight, pale and sickly now, and lasting but a moment before the clouds again blotted it out. Yet I liked the darkness better, for the moon cast such horrendous shadows of those black trees into the lake that it seemed to people the lake with monstrous, maleficent beings, who leered and danced like devils. Though I knew the hobgoblins were only the waving trees, distorted in the moonlight, I was none the less weak-minded enough to see portentous spectres that made my flesh creep. With a half laugh and a half groan at my utter imbecility, I declared to myself that I would go to bed and go to sleep. But as I started to rise from my chair, I saw something that made me sink back again. The moon now was behind a light, translucent cloud, that caused a faint light on the lake. Round a jutting corner I saw a canoe come into my line of vision. A moment’s attention convinced me that it was no ghostly craft, but an ordinary canoe, propelled by a pair of human arms. This touch of human companionship put to rout all my feelings of fear and even my forebodings of tragedy. Normally interested now, I watched to see who might be out at that time of night, and for what purpose. The cloud dispersed itself, and the full clear moonlight shone down on the boat and its occupant. To my surprise it was a girl, a young-appearing girl, and she was paddling softly, but with a skilled stroke that told of long practice. Her hair seemed to be silver in the moonlight, but I realized the light was deceptive and the curly bob might be either flaxen or gold. She wore a white sweater and a white skirt—that much I could see plainly, but I could distinguish little more. She had no hat on, and I could see white stockings and shoes as the craft passed the house. She seemed intent on her work, and her beautiful paddling aroused my intense admiration. She did not look up at our house at all; indeed, she seemed like an enchanted princess, doomed to paddle for her life, so earnestly did she bend to her occupation. She passed the house and kept on, in the direction of Pleasure Dome. Could she be going there? I hardly thought so, yet I watched carefully, hanging out of my window to do so. To my surprise she did steer her little craft straight to the great house next door, and turned as if to land there.