Step by step in a zigzag course the visitor gets toward that stream that is "sometimes a cataract," and, with every moment the remoteness from human life increases. If it was ever true that " Idlewild is getting fast peopled with the viewless crowd that will make haunted ground of it," the gentle ghosts must have departed with him for whom they first appeared. I could imagine Willis there -- Willis and the Irishman who wielded axe and spade at his command; but the people he had conjured into the glen are all gone --

The Fisher's Reach 397

astral bodies and all. However, expectation looked for the obese old toad that used to sit in the middle of

the path and moved reluctantly at a stranger's approach, and peered over to see whether the great freshet of 1853 had left any discernible marks on the tree tmnks, and hoped with every tread to hear the whirr of frightened quail. No one -- not Willis or any other -- could do justice to the beauty of the stream that is the chief charm of the glen. To a])preciate its hurryings and haltings, its cascades and pools, its encompassing boulders and bridging tree trunks, one must see and hear it. Far off, in a world that is out of sight, on that level a hundred feet or so above the stream, there are people. A hundred miles could not make their remoteness more complete. The trees are full of singing and calling birds, the banks covered with ferns and wild flowers; the solitude is that of a beautiful wilderness. What Idlewild was in its prehistoric days we may conjecture from a letter written by its master in February, 1854: We were fortunate enough to identify yesterday a mysterious inmate of Idlewild, who lias been the subject of a great deal of discussion. . . .