him. Its direction, as he judged by sound, was the precise contrary of
the ground current. In the morning, wreckage of all kinds, branches of
trees, roots, and whole clumps of heather strewn about the village and
meadows, while showing that a furious battle had been fought out on
the fells, confirmed this suspicion. A limb of a tree, draped in ivy,
was recognised as part of an old favourite of his walks. The ash from
which it had been torn stood to the south-east of the village. In the
course of the day (the 13th) news was brought in that one of the Seven
Sisters was fallen, and that a clean drive could be seen through the
forest on the top of Knapp. Coupled with these dreadful testimonies
you have the disappearance of Andrew King to help you form your
vision of a village in consternation.

Hear now what befell young Andrew King when he swiftly climbed the
fell, driven forward by the storm. The facts are that he was agog for
adventure, since, all unknown to any but himself, he had ventured to
the summits before, had stood by Silent Water, touched the Seven
Sisters one by one, and had even entered the dreadful, haunted, forest
of Knapp. He had had a fright, had been smitten by that sudden gripe
of fear which palsies limbs and freezes blood, which the ancients
called the Stroke of Pan, and we still call Panic after them. He had
never forgotten what he had seen, though he had lost the edge of the
fear he had. He was older now by some two years, and only waiting the
opportunity for renewed experience. He hoped to have it--and he had
it.

The streaming gale drove him forward as a ship at sea. He ran lightly,
without fatigue or troubled breath. Dimly above him he presently saw
the seven trees, dipping and louting to the weather; but as he neared
them they had no meaning for him, did not, indeed, exist. For now he
saw more than they, and otherwise than men see trees.

II

In a mild and steady light, which came from no illumination of moon or
stars, but seemed to be interfused with the air, in the strong warm
wind which wrapped the fell-top; upon a sward of bent-grass which ran
toward the tarn and ended in swept reeds he saw six young women
dancing in a ring. Not to any music that he could hear did they move,
nor was the rhythm of their movement either ordered or wild. It was
not formal dancing, and it was not at all a Bacchic rout: rather they
flitted hither and thither on the turf, now touching hands, now
straining hea