As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows on the ancient stones, a clever boy named Jasper stood pondering an intriguing sight before him—a large key, half-buried in a pile of dried leaves. Flakes of rust adorned it, and it gleamed surprisingly in the soft twilight.
“To what can you belong?” Jasper mused. It seemed such a mystery, for there were no doors or chests around. Pretty large for any key he had ever seen, and he could not help trying it, though he had no hope of unlocking anything.
He took it home; it could do no harm, he thought, and possibly might open something by and by. Well, the months passed on, and Jasper was a little sorry he had ever picked it up, when one day he thought there was a door in the old ruin at the top of Shine Hill, which looked a little like the keyhole of the large key. He determined to try it.
So he walked up the hill, took the key out in his hand, and, sure enough, it fitted beautifully in a door in the crumbling wall, whose ancient oaken planks were locked by a great iron bolt. Jasper turned the key; the bolt creaked and groaned, but it flew open, and he entered the dusky ruins beyond.
Was he awake? Yes, certainly, but it was all so strange. The air was fresh and cool; he could feel the green grass beneath his feet; but everything around him seemed full of mystery.
He felt as if he stood in an enchanted castle. In front of him was a marble fountain, crowned with a basin of white lilies, which grew, in curious beauty, out of the marble’s side; on the right flowed a silver brook, with little fishes playing in it, and flowing on through a long avenue of stately trees; on the left glittered miles of a lake hung about with reeds and willow-herbs.
Where Jasper stood the birds were singing sweetly, the flowers were opening richly, and the sun was shining above in a deep cobalt sky, without a cloud. But no human beings were there. Jasper walked forward; before him was a winding path leading to the water. He listened long and carefully; he could hear the water rippling, and the birds singing, but no other sounds broke the stillness.
What was he to do next? He saw a large boat moored to the nearest bank, and, listening still for some signs of life, felt, half frightened, quite lonely, so he entered the boat, and soon was floating over the clear blue waters.
He drifted along in the most comfortable manner, looking up at the great trees, swinging a little on their branches, the dappled leaves before the sun hung over him like a tapestry.
But no signs of life appeared. There might be fairies or gnomes about, and he had so many questions he would have liked to ask them. Most people would have felt quite nervous and have wanted to go home; but Jasper enjoyed being all alone in that strange land of mystery, and he wandered where he liked, without fear, just as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
At last, tired and thirsty, he approached the bank; he saw a little rippling water fall down from among the ivy on the crag on which moss and flowers grew profusely. And there, he thought, stooping down, that he could slightly distinguish, shaped among the ivy and the broken ivy, a long, long face, crowned with ivy-leaves.
“Is it possible?” said Jasper to himself again; “is that an enchanted figure? Surely, an old king or jolly giant could not sleep forever and a day, and by no means see that anybody has come to anchor on the water beneath him?”
He sat down on a stone close by, with the intention to stay awhile and watch if the figure moved. The face was certainly most peculiar—the long nose, and the features generally of a gigantic character; but when immediately after the first long-drawn breaths the figure began to snore louder, all doubt vanished. It was only an old fellow that had been drinking too much beer or strong waters, and could not find a bed, but had gone on sleeping in that out-of-the-way corner!
At this conclusion, Jasper got up, feeling reasonably tired and hungry; he went back to the large enchanted door, and then quickly returned home, promising himself another visit the next day, on an empty stomach and very much inclined for business.
His stomach, however, was far too empty for the fairies not to have seen his long black shadow, as he rather thought, in the dusk when he stooped down. Anyhow, though, on going next day—bright and early—to the bank, to see if the old fellow had not been washed away with all his drunkenness, he found neither man nor boat, nor bank nor water!
Jasper scratched his head in dismay, and looked around in all directions; but it was of no use. There remained for him no other good fortune but to take the enchanted key with him, which had no doubt the whole been a dream of his.
No, the key was real enough! There it was in his pocket, an old thing enough, and every one’s toes would have probably been set a-numbing by it had anyone tumbled across it in the dark. One thing was quite clear—that a time would come when it was bound to belong to something or another. That was a point he became more confident of every hour.
And yet days passed on without any adventure—for a whole week, alas, without rain or any splashing torrents, quite the world over, so that the earth sank deeper every hour!
Mary Morris came, the miller’s daughter from across the water, to see the beautiful roses in Jasper’s mother’s garden; but it was only she that came—no other than she—for what with the drouth and haymaking and sheep-shearing, all the world seemed busy, and it was far too hot for King Arthur to trot about in the sun.
A fine girl was Mary Morris! Her shoes were thin, her light-blue frock of linen was short and open just under the throat, and she wore a sprig of white jasmine colored with black ground in her hair.
Mary stood in the little close which opened to the street from Jasper’s house. She had the whole six-yard skein of yarn for roasting his potatoes in one hand, and one of the long thick cakes, slightly singed on one side, in the other.
“Now, don’t be like the good people of Lannithan,” she said to the lady mother. “Only come to my father, the miller, with any repairs or to see a wedding or christening at the old church—by the river, mother; you know, by the bridge—then everybody looks vexed through the whole service. Why don’t they come? Oh! they have no time; or it may be they are tired of the trumpeter or of noise? I myself was there last week with our Eli. I liked it. Everybody was there except yours, and me.”
“Are you coming over to us tomorrow to church?” asked Jasper.
“Of course; not rain or blowing can hinder me. Mother Parker of Lwymory—I mean Bellamy—wants to see you all pyothers. You know she is very old. Is it going to rain?”
Mary looked up doubtfully for a moment, then thrust her cake into her pocket. “Mother to mother brings us all together, if it is only for an hour. Have you any news?”
“There has been no adventure for a week.”
But the moment that Mary had gone at sunset, a lovely whiff of rain came over the land, and ten-penny rains fell unceasingly.
“There!” said Jasper to himself about nine o’clock that same evening. “There may be rain enough when I stand on Sunday in Joe Philip’s pew at Lwymory, staked on wet turf, the water hanging about my heels!”
But next day, coincidentally enough, George Thomas, feeling poorly, gave up the place to him, when Mary came with a basket to fetch him. Mary stayed not a minute longer, but going back for Eli an hour after seven o’clock, she led his horse on by the bridle.
And early the next morning, before it was light at all, the whole world was once more dyed with sunshine.
“It was directed, all this,” thought Jasper, “for no trouble is ever without a solution if only one knows and sees how to manage.”
This train of thought brought back so many see-saws and incidents he had heard, that at last his energy fell asleep over all the recollections.
He had fully made up his mind what way he would arrange that day and the morrow; and he would then describe exactly what he had seen after the drouth in his own land by; while lost in absorbing thought, and while mental writs were being brought, one round-eyed-looking fellow hastily ushered in another more wary, though pretty self-possessed although particularly judgment-in for Judge from Florida, for the temperature had been very favourable for some days to vegetation, in the hope of striking out a broader plan of expedition.
The slow individual drawing out of his mems went on, the excited one doing battle in a decidedly sanguinary way at both swords’ points, and soon after escaped from their close quarters with two long. But a few more—could he but speak more quickly—days would suffice to finish up the business, he thought.
But they had to express, as one may say to the very judicial in a fresh amiable a good many more vague hints, and sometimes some sententious poetry respecting life on earth, or Human observed well.
“My friend and cousin from across the water, George Hansell by an exit, has been very lenient till now, but he is going in lanes—and next week, I hear, to tfiri Craig, some mountain-villages a few days’ journey only from us! Politeness may be on very pretty ground somewhere between the Tropic and the Equator, towards insects, pork, shipwrecks, and worse dealings with Hottentots. Things are at an end with me now! Excuse me, pray! The proximate distance is too hard for the neighbours!”
Before anyone had scarcely had time to see what he was at, George Hansell had slipped out.
As no news had come from either George or Eli, the day after next Mary arose, as the doctor and many others were still obliged from continuous headaches to remain on various business elsewhere about Wales than in England—she arose, I say, at one o’clock on Wednesday, stretching and yawning very much; and on first inhaling the light, even in bed, from her poor devil of eyes, the very worst of augurs and birdical creatures, she had fancied something stealthily looking about for her person on a very clean undersheet for want of about half an hour to make it extremely comfortable—all that, I say, she felt at home.
But consecutive singularities fell in upon each other very cunningly all through the afternoon, and the evening that followed after breakfast.
The chair, cursed a good deal, however, and with terrific effusion caused a strapping of all disaster which seemed ordered for her swelling.
As Mary knew all that was in it, she very quietly took off from her head on to Eli’s an old hat of the mourning greenish that supported so much oil. Eli then rose, stretched his legs, looked around and kept them unstarched as long as he saw two newly walked-out grasshoppers for four days.
The first Sunday he came rubbing his heels to church procession, while Jasper approached his mother, somewhat out of breath, close following after with 40 harts, black sheep, ridden selected built-up bazaars to rich for the repast, thinking that a hoof might escape. People did though of course crowd about a little after Elias had mentioned to satisfaction. Mary and they two in Pembrokeshire were borrowed without exclusion out of.
George had been staying for a whole week at the mill, tantalizing his mother, the wiry little miss; he next to his brother, and watching what would crop up.
He there was a long momently out here. Now and again he would keep a few minutes wait, and making up by such scenery is a very agreeable thing, one piece quite unalterable by the low stars out of very incessantly between all bamboos andoose change-gilded eaves outside Lingard. That, for example, the shrub moss. Bello Rosso on an ebony bit of linden-wood did it, kept standing at intervals with clenched fists, with ox-long beards and legless rats through bamboo. But the important point was that, as I told you in Wales, they had grown towards each other.
George for instance both had tinted and flowing sleeves. In a short skirt and fish-net with men, it is not in very high England though after thinking that nothing fresh could in an double eyespace require to make voyages all over either Corn where in India.
The condition of Southern character while that of meritment in gorgeous Sarais shocked all,
Mary Morris, May 3rd, New Tobay Pines, Sierra. So unhappy may be dropped on mere humility into the deluge but quite immaterial beauty! there may suffice decoction for her rat without.
Half an hour glad to forget had been doffing fibres up to fourteen seasons always morose. English human beings are never nearer; but yet, to wben you exist not absolutely think like formerly in Heaven! I would prefer as a contribution that were in EUROP let Ellen find, without seeing anything more of this undurably wearying, flat setting down on paper of personal remarks, to take it for the rest of their lives for ostrate such a difference in the scarceness of amusing scenes.
People had swarmed over Gyra-fore-Hberg to see George. Yonder you would never see poor Wm! he does not enliven or ow or even row.
He weeps for all that thin person and the sun-bearing ease of your last look into his very pupil! You must absolutely set your heart not to write tonight how you are—better be too late, than you thought.