the lark which mounted the sky in circles singing his delirious song.
Joseph begged Azariah to hearken, but his preceptor was too much
occupied with the difficulties of the descent, nor could he be persuaded
to give much attention to a flight of doves flying hither and thither as
if they had just discovered that they could fly, diving and wheeling
and then going away in a great company, coming back and diving again,
setting Joseph wondering why one bird should separate himself from the
flock and alight again. Again and again this happened, the flock
returning to release him from his post. Were the birds playing a sort of
game? Frolicking they were, for sure, and Joseph felt he would like to
have wings and go away with them, and he wished Azariah would hasten, so
pleasant it was in the valley.

A pleasant spacious valley it was, lying between two hills of about
equal height: the hill they had come down was a little steeper than the
hill they were about to go up. Joseph noticed the shadows that fell from
the cliffs and those that the tall feathery trees, growing out of the
scrub, cast over the sunny bottom of the valley, a water-course probably
in the rainy season; and he enjoyed the little puffing winds that came
and went, and the insects that came out of their hiding-places to enjoy
the morning. The dragonflies were bustling about their business: what it
was not easy to discover, but they went by in companies of small flies,
with now and then a great one that rustled past on gauzy wings. And the
bees were coming and going from their hive in the rocks, incited by the
fragrance of the flowers, and Joseph watched them crawling over the
anemones and leaving them hastily to bury their blunt noses in the
pistils of the white squills that abounded everywhere in the corners, in
the inlets and bays and crevices of the rocks. Butterflies, especially
the white, pursued love untiringly in the air, fluttering and hovering,
uniting and then separating--aerial wooings that Joseph followed with