"I see it; it shrinks and soars, while we gaze into the farther depths
of heaven, as if it were seeking to rise to some higher orbit."

"And do you see," rejoined Mordaunt, "yon fleecy but dusky cloud which
sweeps slowly along the sky towards it? What shape does that cloud
wear to your eyes?"

"It seems to me," answered Lord Ulswater, "to assume the exact
semblance of a funeral procession: the human shape appears to me as
distinctly moulded in the thin vapours as in ourselves; nor would it
perhaps ask too great indulgence from our fancy to image amongst the
darker forms in the centre of the cloud one bearing the very
appearance of a bier,--the plume, and the caparison, and the steeds,
and the mourners! Still, as I look, the likeness seems to me to
increase!"

"Strange!" said Mordaunt, musingly, "how strange is this thing which
we call the mind! Strange that the dreams and superstitions of
childhood should cling to it with so inseparable and fond a strength!
I remember, years since, that I was affected even as I am now, to a
degree which wiser men might shrink to confess, upon gazing on a cloud
exactly similar to that which at this instant we behold. But see:
that cloud has passed over the star; and now, as it rolls away, look,
the star itself has vanished into the heavens."

"But I fear," answered Lord Ulswater, with a slight smile, "that we
can deduce no omen either from the cloud or the star: would, indeed,
that Nature were more visibly knit with our individual existence!
Would that in the heavens there were a book, and in the waves a voice,
and on the earth a token of the mysteries and enigmas of our fate!"