her
voices the wailing of the Trees of Pride.

When he woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on wood
and garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparative
common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertly
to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn
in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they
were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences,
comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of that
eccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconscious
fear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hour
followed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasional
bird. The Squire, like most men of his type, was an early riser, and it
was not likely that he would in this case sleep late; it was much more
likely, in the excitement in which he had left them, that he would not
sleep at all. Yet it was clear that he must be sleeping, perhaps by some
reaction from a strain. By the time the sun was high in heaven Ashe the
lawyer, turning to the others, spoke abruptly and to the point.

"Shall we go into the wood now?" asked Paynter, and almost seemed to
hesitate.

"I will go in," said Treherne simply. Then, drawing up his dark head in
answer to their glances, he added:

"No, do not trouble yourselves. It is never the believer who is afraid."

For the second time they saw a man mount the white curling path and
disappear into the gray tangled wood, but this time they did not have to
wait long to see him again.

A few minutes later he reappeared in the woodland gateway, and came
slowly toward them across the grass. He stopped before the doctor, who
stood nearest, and said something. It was repeated to the others, and
went round the ring with low cries of incredulity. The others plunged
into the wood and returned wildly, and were seen speaking to others
again who gathered from the house; the wild wireless telegraphy which is
the education of countryside communities spread it farther and farther
before the fact itself was fully realized; and before nightfall a
quarter of the county knew that Squire Vane had vanished like a burst
bubble.

Widely as the wild story was repeated, and patiently as it was pondered,
it was long before there was even the beginning of a sequel to it. In
the interval Paynter had politely removed himself from the house of
mourning,