Chapter IX 



A MOUNTAIN RIVULET 



HIS morning the day 

 broke with a promise of 

 sultry heat which has been 

 faithfully kept. The air was 

 lifeless, the birds silent; the 

 landscape seemed to shrink from 

 the ardour of a gaze that penetrated to the 

 very roots of the trees, and covered itself 

 with a faint haze. All things stood hushed 

 and motionless in a dream of heat ; even 

 the harvest fields were deserted. On such 

 a day Nature herself become svoiceless ; she 

 seems to retreat into those deep and silent 

 chambers where the sources of her life are 

 hidden alike from the heat and cold, from 

 darkness and light. A strange and fore- 

 boding stillness is abroad in the earth, and 

 one hides himself from the sun as from an 

 enemy. 



In this unnatural hush there was one 

 voice which made the silence less ominous, 



