The narrator remembers his boyhood visits to a neglected formal garden and the heathlands beyond, wandering with a childhood companion to a small village where forbidden trees, bird nests, and a water-filled pit provided games and mysteries. Most compelling are visits to the old stone church, whose carved altarpieces and a gruesome crucifix lead the narrator's imagination to a painted effigy of a beautiful dead child holding a white water-lily and a stern portrait of the child's father. A local legend that the child drowned in the nearby pool haunts him and prompts a later search for the story behind those images, exploring memory, loss, and the hold of the past.