was hopping on the grass, or visible on bough or in
the sky. Not a living creature was in sight--never was stillness more
complete, or silence more oppressive.

It would have been ridiculous to give way to the old reluctance which
struggled within him. Feltram had strode down the slope, and was
concealed by a screen of bushes from his view. So alone, and full of an
interest quite new to him, he set out in quest of his adventures.

CHAPTER XX

The Haunted Forest

Sir Bale Mardykes walked in a straight line, by bush and scaur, over the
undulating ground, to the blighted ash-tree; and as he approached it,
its withered bough stretched more gigantically into the air, and the
forest seemed to open where it pointed.

He passed it by, and in a few minutes had lost sight of it again, and
was striding onward under the shadow of the forest, which already
enclosed him. He was directing his march with all the care he could, in
exactly that line which, according to Feltram's rule, had been laid down
for him. Now and then, having, as soldiers say, taken an object, and
fixed it well in his memory, he would pause and look about him.

As a boy he had never entered the wood so far; for he was under a
prohibition, lest he should lose himself in its intricacies, and be
benighted there. He had often heard that it was haunted ground, and that
too would, when a boy, have deterred him. It was on this account that
the scene was so new to him, and that he cared so often to stop and look
about him. Here and there a vista opened, exhibiting the same utter
desertion, and opening farther perspectives through the tall stems of
the trees faintly visible in the solemn shadow. No flowers could he see,
but once or twice a wood anemone, and now and then a tiny grove of
wood-sorrel.

Huge oak-trees now began to mingle and show themselves more and more
frequently among the other timber; and gradually the forest became a
great oak wood unintruded upon by any less noble tree. Vast trunks
curving outwards to the roots, and expanding again at the branches,
stood like enormous columns, striking out their groining boughs, with
the dark vaulting of a crypt.

As he walked under the shadow of these noble trees, suddenly his eye was
struck by a strange little flower, nodding quite alone by the knotted
root of one of those huge oaks.

He stooped and picked it up, and as he plucked it, with a harsh scream
just over his head, a large bird with heavy be