LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
tasselled horns, for red-faced monks and jolly friars, for winding bugles, baying hounds, screaming bagpipes, and all that sort of thing.
Farther up the canyon at the right of our path is a deep cleft in the hills, and there in a most romantic spot a spring of pure, sparkling water gushes from mossy rocks half hidden by ferns and buckthorn.
We always make a detour through this picturesque glen to drink of this water from cups fashioned of leaves. We could, of course, bring with us a more satisfactory drinking-cup, but that would savor too much of civilization,—a thing we cannot brook.
Oh, Nell, if only you could see this crystal spring and its wild environment! I’m sure it would suggest to you, as to us, the “fairy well haunted by the White Lady.” One has but to imagine that overshadowing buckthorn to be holly—which it so closely resembles—and the illusion is complete.
Standing there one day, I said to Di: “I have a mind to call up an apparition, if you think you can look on it and live.”
Stepping forward, bowing solemnly to holly and spring, I repeated the well-known incantation,—
“Thrice to the holly brake,
Thrice to the well,
I bid thee awake,
White Maid of Avenel!”
But that golden-girdled spirit failed to appear.
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