"Oh, indeed; and those lines you are now drawing are rivers, I presume."
"Yes; let us call this branch of our solitary estuary, which runs westward, the river Lea, and this, to the east, the river Medway. Is such your majesty's pleasure?"
"La Reine le veut," replied Helen, smiling. "But, Master Geographer, it seems to me that you are putting in mountains and rivers which you have never explored. How do you know that these turns and twists in the stream exist as you represent them? and those spurs, which look so real, have you not added them only to disguise the caterpillar character of your range of hills!"
Hazel laughed as he confessed to drawing on his fancy for some little details. But pleaded that all geographers, when they drew maps, were licensed to fill in a few such touches, where discovery had failed to supply particulars.
Helen had always believed religiously in maps, and was amused when she reflected on her former credulity.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HELEN'S strength was coming back to her but slowly; she complained of great lassitude and want of appetite. But, the following day having cleared up, the sun shone out with great power and brilliancy. She gladly welcomed the return of the fine weather, but Hazel shook his head; ten days' rain was not their portion—the bad weather would return, and complete the month or six weeks' winter to which Nature was entitled. The next evening the appearance of the sky confirmed his opinion. The sun set like a crimson shield; gory, and double its usual size. It entered into a thick bank of dark violet cloud that lay on the horizon, and seemed to split the vapor into rays, but of a dusky kind; immediately above this crimson the clouds were of a brilliant gold, but higher they were the color of rubies, and went gradually off to gray.
But as the orb dipped to the horizon a solid pile of unearthly clouds came up from the southeast; their bodies were singularly and unnaturally black, and mottled with copper-color, and hemmed with a fiery yellow. And these infernal clouds towered up their heads, pressing forward as if they all strove for precedency; it was like Milton's fiends attacking the sky. The rate at which they climbed was wonderful. The sun set and the moon rose full, and showed those angry masses surging upward and jostling each other as they flew.
Yet below it was dead calm.