midday
The house came swimming and plunging after her , like a spectral ship on big seas , and her father and mother lived and died in her breast ; and now they were strong , consulting , chatting , laughing , caressing ; now still and white , caught by a vapour that dived away with them either to right or left , but always with the same suddenness , leaving her to question herself whether she existed , for more of life seemed to be with their mystery than with her speculations . The phantom ring of mist enclosing for miles the invariable low-sweeping dark spruce-fir kept her thoughts on them as close as the shroud . She walked fast , but scarcely felt that she was moving . Near midday the haunted circle widened ; rocks were loosely folded in it , and heads of trees , whose round intervolving roots grasped the yellow roadside soil ; the mists shook like a curtain , and partly opened and displayed a tapestry-landscape , roughly worked , of woollen crag and castle and suggested glen , threaded waters , very prominent foreground , Autumn flowers on banks ; a predominant atmospheric greyness . The sun threw a shaft , liquid instead of burning , as we see his beams beneath a wave ; and then the mists narrowed again , boiled up the valleys and streams above the mountain , curled and flew , and were Python coils pierced by brighter arrows of the sun . A spot of blue signalled his victory above . To look at it was to fancy they had been walking under water and had now risen to the surface .