arvest, and the adventure was irresistible.
At first he stole along by the brook in the shadow of the alders, where
the grass and the flowers of wet meadows grew richly; but as he drew
nearer to the fort, and its height now rose sheer above him, he left all
shelter, and began desperately to mount. There was not a breath of wind;
the sunlight shone down on the bare hillside; the loud chirp of the
grasshoppers was the only sound. It was a steep ascent and grew steeper
as the valley sank away. He turned for a moment, and looked down towards
the stream which now seemed to wind remote between the alders; above the
valley there were small dark figures moving in the cornfield, and now and
again there came the faint echo of a high-pitched voice singing through
the air as on a wire. He was wet with heat; the sweat streamed off his
face, and he could feel it trickling all over his body. But above him the
green bastions rose defiant, and the dark ring of oaks promised coolness.
He pressed on, and higher, and at last began to crawl up the _vallum_, on
hands and knees, grasping the turf and here and there the roots that had
burst through the red earth. And then he lay, panting with deep breaths,
on the summit.

Within the fort it was all dusky and cool and hollow; it was as if one
stood at the bottom of a great cup. Within, the wall seemed higher than
without, and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There
were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different
from the common nettles in the lanes, and Lucian, letting his hand touch
a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch there
was an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old, crooked
and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms; beech and oak and
hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed that each
seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He began to fight his way
through the ugly growth, stumbling and getting hard knocks from the
rebound of twisted boughs. His foot struck once or twice against
something harder than wood, and looking down he saw stones white with the
leprosy of age, but still showing the work of the axe. And farther, the
roots of the stunted trees gripped the foot-high relics of a wall; and a
round heap of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt
poisonous. The earth was black and unctuous, and bubbling under the feet,
left no track behind. From it, in