Bernard Capes

“ To say that he was not conscious of a shock and thrill would be to underrate his sensibility; but, though, in the sudden start he gave, he nearly dropped the lantern, his feeling was one of astonishment rather than of fear. And, in the same instant, all supernatural tremors were lost in the excitement of the collector, for the light of the bull's-eye had fallen full upon a great moth resting drunk and stupefied upon the wet bark of the tree. ”

“ Making straight, after its kind, for its destination, this antique track (for it is little more at this date) conducts you from the outset into an immense solitude of downs, over which it passes in a long series of dips and rises, now by grass, now by hedgerows, until, at some three miles distant, it runs into timber very quiet and remote. Here is the wood of Lamont, notable for its strange flowers and insects, for its grassy glades and tangled coverts. These are nowadays jealously 'preserved' ”

“ Low in the sky hung a full moon, so radiant and so large in seeming, that it appeared like the glowing sail of some fairy craft, just risen above the horizon of billowing hills, and reflected in their milky greenness as in water. ”

“ It was only at dawn that he had lost consciousness, under, as it appeared to him, the whispering branches of an oak tree. The nurse coming into the room, pale and startled, was the first to awake him to a sense of realities. She showed a disposition to cry. Would her master and mistress come at once, she said. Baby was sitting up in her cradle and talking. ”

“ The nurse could not be induced to stay, and another was procured. But, indeed, her post was a sinecure. The child was always with her father; her elfish prattle followed his footsteps all day long. When she came near her mother, it was to be coldly repulsed, and often to answer pertly, "Baby not love you"; to which the woman would reply: "I don't want your love. You are no child of mine." ”