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It happened to be that season of the year at which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three. The incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was great.

I had seen such phosphorescent ghosts before and I had but to step boldly forward and give the stub a kick to send the spectre flying in fragments that dropped like huge glowworms in chunks to the sodden ground. Often in a northeast rain after long drought a rotten birch stump will thus glow with phosphorescent fire producing a most formidable and tradition-satisfying ghost.

We can continue the game." Venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had gathered thirteen glowworms as many as he could find in a space of four or five minutes upon a fox-glove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. The reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary return with these. "Determined to go on, then?" he said drily.

Diana felt, as the circle of the horizon flew instantaneously around her, a far aerial sense of the ring of heights beyond London and corners where she had climbed as a child; she seemed almost to hear the rooks cawing about the old pines on Highgate, or to see the glowworms gathering and kindling in the woods of Box Hill.

The pedlar at first pretended to be unwilling, but after he had looked all across the wide heath and seen that there was no one coming, and that the hounds by the doorway were fast asleep in the sun, and the very pigeons on the roof had all got their heads under their wings, he ventured to step across the threshold into the bay window, and begin to open his pack and display all his fine things, taking care to set them out in the sunshine, which made them glitter like glowworms.

Those were indeed pleasant days when everything was new and strange; it seems now almost as if years, not months, had gone past since we first entered these latitudes. We found the carriage waiting for us when we arrived at the bottom of the hill about seven o'clock, and it was not long before we reached the town. The glowworms and fireflies were numerous.

Sometimes her shadow fell in the lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it; it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark, motionless countenance, with its wandering, glittering eyes, appeared to hang upon the dense leafage that sheltered all the rest of him like a vizard in whose cavities glowworms had gathered.

The sea lay at their feet a plain of silver, and the moonbeams danced over the waves in broken lines of luminous atoms; boats passed to and fro, their red lights flashing like glowworms; and it seemed to Andras and Varhely, as they approached the sea, receding over the wet, gleaming sands, that they were walking upon quicksilver.

A reflection like that of dawn whitened the Basilica; while the rest of the horizon faded into deep obscurity, amidst which you only saw a few stray tapers journeying alone, like glowworms seeking their way with the help of their little lights.

High on the hill among the trees the distant lights of Slumberleigh shone like glowworms through the mist. He looked at them with wild eyes. She was there, the woman who loved him, and whom he passionately loved. He could stretch forth his hand to take her if he would. His breath came hard and thick. A hand seemed clutching and tearing at his heart.