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Till on a sudden, as she lay looking up toward the far-away blue sky, and she so little and low on the face of the waters, and the lake so deep beneath her, and the wind coming ever fresher from the west, and the ripple rising higher against her, a terror fell upon her, and she longed for the green earth and its well-wrought little blossoms and leaves and grass; then she turned over again and swam straight for the eyot, which now was but a little green heap far away before her.
At last she arose, and when she had plucked and eaten some handfuls of the strawberries which grew plenteously on the sweet ground of the eyot, she went down to the landward-looking shore, and took the water, and swam slowly across the warm ripple till she came once more to the strand and her raiment.
So she went down to the water-side, and when she was standing knee- deep in the little sandy bight aforesaid, she looked over to Green Eyot, and was minded to swim over thither, as oft she did. And it was a windless dawn after a hot night, and a light mist lay upon the face of the water, and above it rose the greenery of the eyot.
The girl slipped from the proffered hands and fled from the room. "Whatsh matter with the girl?" said Sir William. Out at sea, all by itself, somewhere about thirty miles from a certain good-sized island in a certain ocean, there lies another little island an eyot about a mile long and half a mile broad. It is a coral islet.
And when she had done, she sat down again in heavy mood as it seemed, and watched Birdalone swimming, and when she beheld her body come forth out of the water, and pass out of sight amongst the flowers of the eyot, she arose and went her ways home.
Tempted by the signboard of the Red Lion, and by the red-sailed wherries clustered between the dock and the eyot, he stopped to quaff a foaming pewter on a bench outside the old inn.
At such places the moon would perhaps be obscured by passing clouds, and we would land upon an eyot until she shone once more in a clear heaven. Stretched at length upon the fine white sand waiting for her return, we could hear the boom of waters in the distance calling us on to a renewal of the conflict.
Wherefore she took this rede at the last, that she would keep all hidden in her own breast till she should see Habundia again; and meanwhile she might steal down thither from time to time to see if the thing still abode there; which she might the easier do by swimming if she chose her time heedfully, and go thither from Rock Eyot, which now and again she visited.
During the year of the Great Exhibition milk was very scarce, and this grass, which was excellent for the stable-fed cows, fetched great prices. In the summer the willows, full of leaf, and exactly appropriate to the flat lacustrine outline of the eyot and the reach, are full of birds, though the reed-warbler does not always return. He was absent last year.
But when she was come just over against Rock Eyot, she found a straight creek or inlet of the water across her way; and the said creek ran right up into the alder thicket; and, indeed, was much overhung by huge ancient alders, gnarled, riven, mossy, and falling low over the water.
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