The place was indeed a little epitome of the season’s prolific growth. Above and about them, elder-bushes and hazels met in entangled profusion; while at their feet the marshy soil was covered with a mass of moss and cool-rooted leafy plants. Golden-green burdocks grew there, and dark dog-mercury; while mixed with aromatic water-mint and ground ivy, crowds of sturdy red campions lifted up their rose-coloured heads. The undergrowth was so thick, and the roots of the willows and alders so betraying, that over and over again he had to make a path for her, and hold back with his hand some threatening withy-switch or prickly thorn branch, that appeared likely to invade her face or body. The indescribable charm of the hour, as the broken sunlight, almost horizontal now, threw red patches, like the blood of wounded satyrs, upon tree-trunks and mossy stumps, and made the little marsh-pools gleam as if filled with fairy wine, found its completest expression in the long-drawn flute-music, at the same time frivolously gay and exquisitely sad, of the blackbird’s song. An angry cuckoo, crying its familiar cry as it flew, flapped away from some hidden perch, just above their heads. Not many more blackbird’s notes and not many more cuckoo’s cries would that diminutive jungle hear, before the great midsummer silence descended upon it, to be broken only by the less magical sounds of the later season. Nothing but the auspicious accident of the extreme lateness of the spring had given to the visitor from Ohio these revelations of enchantment. It was one of those unequalled moments when the earth seems to breathe out from its most secret heart perfumes and scents that seem to belong to a more felicitous planet than our planet, murmurs and voices adapted to more responsive ears than our ears. It was doubtless, so Dangelis thought, on such an evening as this, that the first notion of the presence in such places of beings of a finer and yet a grosser texture than man’s, first entered the imagination of humanity. In such a spot were the earth-gods born. Many feathered things, besides blackbirds and cuckoos abounded in the mill spinney. They had scarcely reached the opposite end of the little wood, when with a sudden cry of excitement and a quick sinking on her knees, the girl turned to him with a young thrush in her hand. It was big enough to be capable of flying and, as she held it in her soft white fingers, it struggled desperately and uttered little cries. She held it tightly in one hand, and with the other caressed its ruffled feathers, looking sideways at her companion, as she did so, with dreamy, half-shut, voluptuous eyes. “Little darling,” she whispered. And then, with a breathless gasp in her voice,--“Kiss its head, Mr. Dangelis. It can’t get away.” He stooped over her as she held the bird up to him, and if in obeying her he brushed with his lips fingers as well as feathers, the accident was not one he could bring himself to regret.