There was an inn here and there in the village, but the streets, as they might have been called by courtesy, were so winding and so interlaced, crossing here and crossing there, that to walk down any one of them
“You cowards,” cried the captain.
streamlet and play to it and its water-lilies. The blood-hound was her constant companion, hardly ever leaving her side for a moment. Nor did she ever go out without Kammie. She never cared much whither she went or wandered, so long as there was rustic beauty around her, and I daresay she was guilty of trespassing as often as not.
The sun was declining in the west, and his beams were already shimmering horizontally through the tall and leafy elms of a beautiful park, one afternoon when she came to a tiny Gothic bridge and crossed it. It was evidently private ground, for there was an air of cultivation everywhere around, and two snow-white swans sailed up to her and looked sidelong at her with their wise, soft eyes. These swans seemed to be fifty years of age, if a day.
Peggy wandered on and over the grass, past great clumps of brown-stemmed pine-trees, clumps of ferns and rhododendrons, at present out of bloom, till she came in sight of a fine old English mansion-house: yellow were its walls against the green and well-kept lawn, and in the rays of the fast-declining sun.
Peggy stopped now and gazed in a bewildered way at the house, then at all its surroundings. Where had she seen a house something like this before? Was it in a dream, or had the place only some resemblance to mansions she must often have seen during her wanderings. But no; it must have been a dream. She seated herself on a little rustic bench, and Ralph jumped up by her side. Her fingers touched the mandoline. Music always clears memory, because it calms the mind.
She was singing a song that was sad but sweet. She could not tell who had taught her that song, nor where she had heard it, only it welled up in her memory, and seemed to mingle with the dream that was around her.