Lord Gro came now to his horse again, and mounted and rode northaway through the fells all that summer afternoon, full of cloudy fancies. When it was eventide his way was high up along the steep side of a mountain between the screes and the grass, following a little path made by the wild sheep. Far beneath in the valley was a small river tortuously flowing along a bouldery bed amid hillocks of old moraines which were like waves of a sea of grass-clad earth. The July sun wheeled low, flinging the shadows of the hills far up the westward-facing slopes where Gro was a-riding, but where he rode and above him the hillside was yet aglow with the warm low sunshine; and the distant peak that shut in the head of the valley, rearing his huge front like the gable of a house, with sweeping ribs of bare rock and scree and a crest of crag like a great breaker frozen to stone in mid career, bathed yet in a radiance of opalescent light. Turning the shoulder of the hillside at a place where the hill was cut by a shallow gully, he saw before him a hollow or sheltered nook. There, protected by the great body of the hill from the blasts of the east and north, two rowan trees and some hollies grew in the clefts of the rock above the watercourse. Under their shadow was a cave, not large but so big as a man might well abide in and be dry in wild weather, and beyond it on the right a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to behold. This was the fashion of it: a slab of rock, twice a man’s height, tilted a little forward from the hill, so that the water fell clear from its upper edge in a thin stream into a rocky basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, but a-churn always with bubbles from the plunging jet from above; and over all the rocks about it grew mosses and lichens and little water-flowers, nourished by the stream at root and refreshed by the spray. The Lord Gro said in his heart, “Here would I dwell for ever had I but the art to make myself little as an eft. And I would build me an house a span high beside yonder cushion of moss emerald-hued, with those pink foxgloves to shade my door which balance their bells above the foaming waters. This shy grass of Parnassus should be my drinking cup, with pure white chalice poised on a hair-thin stem; and the curtains of my bed that little thirsty sandwort which, like a green heaven sown with milk-white stars, curtains the shady sides of these rocks.” Resting in this imagination he abode long time looking on that fairy place, so secretly bestowed in the fold of the naked mountain. Then, unwilling to depart from so fair a spot, and bethinking him, besides, that after so many hours his horse was weary, he dismounted and lay down beside the stream. And in a short while, having his spirits sublimed with the sweet imagination of those wonders he had beheld, he was fain to suffer the long dark lashes to droop over his large and liquid eyes. And deep sleep overcame him.