Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap
of moss; which at some epoch of the preceding century, had been
a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade,
and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell
where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising
gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst,
over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending
over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which
choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black
depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier
passages there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown,
sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the
stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at
some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces
of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and
here and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All
these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on
making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing,
perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should
whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it
flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a
pool.
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