She had whispered her own secret in return , and they had kissed and promised by the wild wood spring . They had never stood together by it again -- Martin had sailed on his fatal voyage soon after ; but to Rosemary West it was always a sacred spot , hallowed by that immortal hour of youth and love . Whenever she passed near it she turned aside to hold a secret tryst with an old dream -- a dream from which the pain had long gone , leaving only its unforgettable sweetness . The spring was a hidden thing . You might have passed within ten feet of it and never have suspected its existence . Two generations past a huge old pine had fallen almost across it . Nothing was left of the tree but its crumbling trunk out of which the ferns grew thickly , making a green roof and a lacy screen for the water . A maple-tree grew beside it with a curiously gnarled and twisted trunk , creeping along the ground for a little way before shooting up into the air , and so forming a quaint seat ; and September had flung a scarf of pale smoke-blue asters around the hollow . John Meredith , taking the cross-lots road through Rainbow Valley on his way home from some pastoral visitations around the Harbour head one evening , turned aside to drink of the little spring . Walter Blythe had shown it to him one afternoon only a few days before , and they had had a long talk together on the maple seat . John Meredith , under all his shyness and aloofness , had the heart of a boy . He had been called Jack in his youth , though nobody in Glen St. Mary would ever have believed it . Walter and he had taken to each other and had talked unreservedly . Mr. Meredith found his way into some sealed and sacred chambers of the lad 's soul wherein not even Di had ever looked . They were to be chums from that friendly hour and Walter knew that he would never be frightened of the minister again . `` I never believed before that it was possible to get really acquainted with a minister , '' he told his mother that night . John Meredith drank from his slender white hand , whose grip of steel always surprised people who were unacquainted with it , and then sat down on the maple seat . He was in no hurry to go home ; this was a beautiful spot and he was mentally weary after a round of rather uninspiring conversations with many good and stupid people . The moon was rising . Rainbow Valley was wind-haunted and star-sentinelled only where he was , but afar from the upper end came the gay notes of children 's laughter and voices .
The ethereal beauty of the asters in the moonlight , the glimmer XXXXX the little spring , the soft croon of the brook , the wavering grace of the brackens all wove a white magic round John Meredith .
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