Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/82

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sunbeam could penetrate the dense canopy of leaves.

After a while she emerged into a clearing. In the middle of it there was a pool, almost entirely surrounded with dark green moss, very soft, overhung by a boulder. It, too, had a covering of moss. A tiny stream flowed silently and mysteriously into the pool, which was so dark that Eepersip could just see its floor of dark sand. On the bottom grew strange star-leaved plants, and small fishes were nibbling them. It was all very strange and magical, it was so silent.

Eepersip stayed looking at this pool for a long time, and then she decided to follow the little brook which was trickling into it and see where it came from. She followed it through deep woodland for about three miles. All this way it was sluggish. Then the land changed abruptly; and Eepersip realized that she was climbing a steep and rugged hill. She went up and up on a rough path. It was very hard climbing, and she was becoming tired. At last she got to the top, and her happy eye looked back upon the way she had come.

She saw from that high perch the pool, into which she knew the little brook was trickling; the blotches which were clumps and patches of dark forest; the field, a mass of sparkling green light,