of earth. They exchanged simple, natural
thoughts, or idle words in which was no thought at all.

Before long, they came to an old broken gate, half open; it was the
entrance to a narrow cartway, now unused, which descended windingly
between high thick hedges. Ruts of a foot in depth, baked hard by
summer, showed how miry the track must be in the season of rain.

'This is our way,' said Tarrant, his hand on the lichened wood. 'Better
than the pier or the promenade, don't you think?'

'But we have gone far enough.'

Nancy drew back into the lane, looked at her flowers, and then shaded
her eyes with them to gaze upward.

'Almost. Another five minutes, and you will see the place I told you of.
You can't imagine how beautiful it is.'

'Another day--'

'We are all but there--'

He seemed regretfully to yield; and Nancy yielded in her turn. She
felt a sudden shame in the thought of having perhaps betrayed timidity.
Without speaking, she passed the gate.

The hedge on either side was of hazel and dwarf oak, of hawthorn and
blackthorn, all intertwined with giant brambles, and with briers
which here and there met overhead. High and low, blackberries hung in
multitudes, swelling to purple ripeness. Numberless the trailing and
climbing plants. Nancy's skirts rustled among the greenery; her cheeks
were touched, as if with a caress, by many a drooping branchlet; in
places, Tarrant had to hold the tangle above her while she stooped to
pass.

And from this they emerged into a small circular space, where the
cartway made a turn at right angles and disappeared behind thickets.
They were in the midst of a plantation; on every side trees closed about
them, with a low and irregular hedge to mark the borders of the grassy
road. Nancy's eyes fell at once upon a cluster of magnificent foxgloves,
growing upon a bank which rose to the foot of an old elm; beside
the foxgloves lay a short-hewn trunk, bedded in the ground, thickly
overgrown with mosses, lichens, and small fungi.

'Have I misled you?' said Tarrant, watching her face with frank
pleasure.

'No, indeed you haven't. This is very beautiful!'

'I discovered it last year, and spent hours here alone. I couldn't ask
you to come and see it then,' he added, laughing.

'It is delightful!'

'Here's your seat,--who knows how many years it has waited for you?'

She sat down upon the old trunk. About the roots of the elm above grew
masses of fern, and beneath it a rough bit of