en of the
ash-trees above them and shouting as they ran. But presently cypresses
and sombre yews rose on either side of the path, and the road to Wych
Maries was soft and silent, and the serene sun was lost, and their
whispering footsteps forbade them to shout any more. At the bottom of
the hill the trees increased in number and variety; the sun shone
through pale oak-leaves and the warm green of sycamores. Nevertheless a
sadness haunted the wood, where the red campions made only a mist of
colour with no reality of life and flowers behind.

"This wood's awfully jolly, isn't it?" said Mark, hoping to gain from
Esther's agreement the dispersal of his gloom.

"I don't care for it much," she replied. "There doesn't seem to be any
life in it."

"I heard a cuckoo just now," said Mark.

"Yes, out of tune already."

"Mm, rather out of tune. Mind those nettles," he warned her.

"I thought Stephen said he drove here."

"Perhaps we've come the wrong way. I believe the road forked by the ash
wood above. Anyway if we go toward the sun we shall come out in the
valley, and we can walk back along the banks of the river to Wychford."

"We can always go back through the wood," said Esther.

"Yes, if you don't mind going back the way you came."

"Come on," she snapped. She was not going to be laughed at by Mark, and
she dared him to deny that he was not as much aware as herself of an
eeriness in the atmosphere.

"Only because it seems dark in here after that dazzling sunlight on the
wold. Hark! I hear the sound of water."

They struggled through the undergrowth toward the sound; soon from a
steep wooded bank they were gazing down into a millpool, the surface of
which reflected with a gloomy deepening of their hue the colour but not
the form of the trees above. Water was flowing through a rotten sluice
gate down from the level of the stream upon a slimy water-wheel that
must have been out of action for many years.

"The dark tarn of Auber in the misty mid region of Weir!" Mark
exclaimed. "Don't you love _Ulalume_? I think it's about my favourite
poem."

"Never heard of it," Esther replied indifferently. He might have taken
advantage of this confession to give her a lecture on poetry, if the
millpool and the melancholy wood had not been so affecting as to make
the least attempt at literary exposition impertinent.

"And there's the chapel," Mark exclaimed, pointing to a ruined edifice
of stone, the walls of which were stai