The pond undoubtedly partook somewhat of the nature of an Eastern myth in this little New England village.

Although with the uncompromising practicality of their natures the people had given it a name so directly significant as to make it lose all poetical glamour, and render it the very commonplace of ghastliness, it still appealed to their imaginations.
The laws of natural fancy obtained here as everywhere else, although in small and homely measure.

The village children found no nymphs in the trees of their New England woods.

If there were fauns among them, and the children took their pointed ears for leaves as they lay sleeping in the undergrowth, they never knew it.

They had none of these, but they had their pond, with its unfathomable depth.