That is the worst of
what there is to encounter; and if I tell you of what once happened
to a friend of mine, it is by no means to tantalise you with false
hopes; for the adventure was unique. It was on a very cold, still,
sunless morning, with a flat grey sky and a frosty tingle in the air,
that this friend (who shall here be nameless) heard the notes of a
key-bugle played with much hesitation, and saw the smoke of a fire
spread out along the green pine-tops, in a remote uncanny glen, hard
by a hill of naked boulders. He drew near warily, and beheld a
picnic party seated under a tree in an open. The old father knitted
a sock, the mother sat staring at the fire. The eldest son, in the
uniform of a private of dragoons, was choosing out notes on a key-
bugle. Two or three daughters lay in the neighbourhood picking
violets. And the whole party as grave and silent as the woods around
them! My friend watched for a long time, he says; but all held their
peace; not one spoke or smiled; only the dragoon kept choosing out
single notes upon the bugle, and the father knitted away at his work
and made strange movements the while with his flexible eyebrows.
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