The lane rose a little presently, following a slight undulation of the bed of the vale; and when he reached the top of this small eminence, the expanse of country that stretched before him assumed for his imagination that particular look of a land submerged under fathoms of transparent water, which, from his childhood up, had especially thrilled him.

To his left rose the corrugated trunk of an enormous elm-tree, about whose roots a thick covering of green moss held the fallen rain like a sponge.

The sight of this moss swept his mind back to Christie’s garden and thence to those slippery wharf-steps and wave-swept pier-posts that he associated with the first discovery of his mystic ecstasy.