SWALLOW AND PIKE 39 



a heron on the farther side, standing knee-deep in the 

 shallow water patiently watching for a fish, his grey 

 figure showing distinctly against a background of bright 

 green sedges. Between me and the heron scores of 

 swallows and martins were hawking for flies, gliding 

 hither and thither a little above the glassy surface, and 

 occasionally dropping down to dip and wet their under 

 plumage in the water. And all at once, fifty yards out 

 from the margin, there was a great splash, as if a big 

 stone had been flung out into the lake ; and then two 

 or three moments later out from the falling spray and 

 rocking water rose a swallow, struggling laboriously up, 

 its plumage drenched, and flew slowly away. A big 

 pike had dashed at and tried to seize it at the moment 

 of dipping in the water, and the swallow had escaped as 

 by a miracle. I turned round to see if any person was 

 near, who might by chance have witnessed so strange a 

 thing, in order to speak to him about it. There was no 

 person within sight, but if on turning round my eyes 

 had encountered the form of a Cistercian monk, 

 returning from his day's labour in the fields, in his dirty 

 black-and-white robe, his implements on his shoulders, 

 his face and hands begrimed with dust and sweat, the 

 apparition on that day, in the mood I was in, would not 

 have greatly surprised me. 



The atmosphere, the expression of the past may so 

 attune the mind as almost to produce the illusion that 

 the past is now. 



But more than old memories, great as their power 



