The fashionable hotel at the Springs holds three hundred, and it was packed.  I had meant to lounge there for a fortnight and then finish my holidays at Long Branch; but eighty, at least, out of the three hundred, were young and moved lightly in muslin.  With my years and experience I felt so safe, that to walk, talk, or dance with them became simply a luxury, such as I had never—­at least so freely—­possessed before.  My name and standing, known to some families, were agreeably exaggerated to the others, and I enjoyed that supreme satisfaction which a man always feels when he discovers or imagines that he is popular in society.  There is a kind of premonitory apology implied in my saying this, I am aware.  You must remember that I am culprit and culprit’s counsel at the same time.

You have never been at Wampsocket?  Well, the hills sweep around in a crescent on the northern side and four or five radiating glens descending from them unite just above the village.  The central one leading to a waterfall (called “Minnehehe” by the irreverent young people, because there is so little of it), is the fashionable drive and promenade; but the second ravine on the left, steep, crooked, and cumbered with bowlders which have tumbled from somewhere and lodged in the most extraordinary groupings, became my favorite walk of a morning.  There was a footpath in it, well-trodden at first, but gradually fading out as it became more like a ladder than a path, and I soon discovered that no other city feet than mine were likely to scale a certain rough slope which seemed the end of the ravine.  With the aid of the tough laurel-stems I climbed to the top, passed through a cleft as narrow as a doorway, and presently found myself in a little upper dell, as wild and sweet and strange as one of the pictures that haunt us on the brink of sleep.

There was a pond—­no, rather a bowl—­of water in the centre; hardly twenty yards across, yet the sky in it was so pure and far down that the circle of rocks and summer foliage inclosing it seemed like a little planetary ring, floating off alone through space.  I can’t explain the charm of the spot, nor the selfishness which instantly suggested that I should keep the discovery to myself.  Ten years earlier, I should have looked around for some fair spirit to be my “minister,” but now—­

One forenoon—­I think it was the third or fourth time I had visited the place—­I was startled to find the dint of a heel in the earth, half-way up the slope.  There had been rain during the night, and the earth was still moist and soft It was the mark of a woman’s boot, only to be distinguished from that of a walking-stick by its semicircular form.  A little higher, I found the outline of a foot, not so small as to awake an ecstasy, but with a suggestion of lightness, elasticity, and grace.  If hands were thrust through holes in a boardfence, and nothing of the attached bodies seen, I can easily imagine that some would attract and others repel us:  with footprints the impression is weaker, of course, but we cannot escape it.  I am not sure whether I wanted to find the unknown wearer of the boot within my precious personal solitude; I was afraid I should see her, while passing through the rocky crevice, and yet was disappointed when I found no one.