A BROOK 



muddy) yields after a while to the eye. Half close 

 the eyelids, and while gazing into it let your intel- 

 ligence rather wait upon the corners of the eye 

 than on the glance you cast straight forward. For 

 some reason when thus gazing the edge of the eye 

 becomes exceedingly sensitive, and you are con- 

 scious of slight motions or of a thickness not 

 a defined object, but a thickness which indicates an 

 object which is otherwise quite invisible. 



The slow feeling sway of a fish's tail, the edges 

 of which curl over and grasp the water, may in 

 this manner be identified without being positively 

 seen, and the dark outline of its body known to 

 exist against the equally dark water or bank. 

 Shift, too, your position according to the fall of the 

 light, just as in looking at a painting. From one 

 point of view the canvas shows little but the 

 presence of paint and blurred colour, from another 

 at the side the picture stands out. 



Sometimes the water can be seen into best from 

 above, sometimes by lying on the sward, now by 

 standing back a little way, or crossing to the oppo- 

 site shore. A spot where the sunshine sparkles with 

 dazzling gleam is perhaps perfectly impenetrable till 

 you get the other side of the ripple, when the same 

 rays that just now baffled the glance light up the 

 bottom as if thrown from a mirror for the pur- 

 pose. I convinced myself that there was nothing 

 -67- 



