E. HENLEY.
And Rogers went over to unpack. It was soon done. He sat at his window
in the carpenter's house and enjoyed the peace. The spell of evening
stole down from the woods. London and all his strenuous life seemed
very far away. Bourcelles drew up beside him, opened her robe, let
down her forest hair, and whispered to him with her voice of many
fountains....
She lies just now within the fringe of an enormous shadow, for the sun
has dipped behind the blue-domed mountains that keep back France.
Small hands of scattered mist creep from the forest, fingering the
vineyards that troop down towards the lake. A dog barks. Gygi, the
gendarme, leaves the fields and goes home to take his uniform from its
peg. Pere Langel walks among his beehives. There is a distant tinkling
of cow-bells from the heights, where isolated pastures gleam like a
patchwork quilt between the spread of forest; and farther down a train
from Paris or Geneva, booming softly, leaves a trail of smoke against
the background of the Alps where still the sunshine lingers.
But trains, somehow, do not touch the village; they merely pass it.
Busy with vines, washed by its hill-fed stream, swept by the mountain
winds, it lies unchallenged by the noisy world, remote, un-noticed,
half forgotten. And on its outskirts stands the giant poplar that
guards it--_la sentinelle_ the peasants call it, because its lofty
crest, rising to every wind, sends down the street first warning of
any coming change.
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