Chapter 21
WE PICK UP ANOTHER THREAD. Darkness and silence reigned in the conservatory; the group of the sleeping man and attendant woman was lost in the warm gloom, and scarcely a motion--the low drawing of a breath--told of their presence. A great gray owl, which had passed the daylight in some obscure corner, launched darkling forth on the air and winged hither and thither,--once or twice fanning the sleeper's face with silent pinions. The crocodile lazily edged off the stone, plumped quietly into the water, and clambered up the hither margin of the pool, there coming to another long pause. A snail, making a night-journey across the floor, found in its path a diamond, sparkling with a light of its own. The snail extended a cool cautious tentacle,--recoiled it fastidiously and shaped a
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