“Your rhapsodies are like most fine-sounding things, more to the hope than the heart,” Kate murmured, gazing dreamily into the purple mass of color hovering changefully over the opaque water at their feet.  “You mean they do not reach your heart; that your soul is far away as to what is here.  I think Vincent and Rosa would not agree that life has any more or narrower limitations here than we recognize at Acredale.”

“Let us go on the water.”  He pulled the rude shallop to her feet and they got in and went on, Jack not heeding her gibe.  “These brackish, threatening deeps remind me of all sorts of weird and uncanny things; Stygian pools—­Lethe—­what not mystic and terrifying.  See, the tiny waves that curl before our boat are like thin ink; a thousand roots and herbs and who knows what mysterious vegetable mixture colors these dark deeps?  I could fancy myself on an uncanny pilgrimage, seeking some demon delight.”

There was but one oar in the boat, which the negroes used as a scull.  Jack made a poor fist with this, but there was no need of rowing.  Kate, catching a projecting limb from the thick bushes on the margin, sent the little, wabbling craft onward in noisless, spasmodic plunges.  Deep fringes of wild columbine fell in fluffy sprays from the higher banks as the boat drifted along the other side.  The thickets were musical with the chattering cat-birds and whip-poor-wills, mingled with a score of woodland melodists that Jack’s limited woodcraft did not enable him to recognize.

“Who would think that we are within a half-mile of a completely appointed country house?  We are as isolated here from all vestiges of civilization as we should be in a Florida everglade,” Kate said, as the little craft swam along in an eddy.

“It seems to me typical of the people—­this curiously wild transition from blooming, well-kept gardens, to such still and solemn nature.  The place might be called primeval:  look at those gnarled roots, like prodigious serpents; see the shining bark of the larch—­I think it is larch—­I should call it ‘slippery’ elm if it were at Acredale; but see the fantastic effects of the little lances of sunlight breaking through!  Isn’t it the realization of all you ever read in ‘Uncle Tom’ or ’Dred’?”

Kate glanced into the weird deeps of foliage, where a bird, fluttering on the wing, aroused strange echoes.  “Ugh!” she said, in a half-whisper, “I can imagine it the meeting-place of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’s’ eldritches seeing this—­but, all the same, do you know it is fascinating beyond words to me?  Should you mind going in a little farther—­I should like the sensation of awe the place suggests, since there can be no danger—­while you are here?”

He gave her a quick glance, but her eyes were fastened on the dark recesses beyond.

“I should be delighted, but I won’t insure your gown, nor—­nor half promise that we shall come out alive.”

“Oh, as to that, I’ll take the risk.”