ome sylvan corner
of the Roman campagna.... Then once more I heard the nightingale, and it
sang me back into contemporary realities. I wondered if it had been
singing all the time. I had not heard less of it during the hour that
Uvo and I had spent underneath this very wood, four summers ago!

That was on the first night of our life at Witching Hill, and this was
to be our last. I arranged it beautifully when I got in and had tried to
explain how entirely I had lost my bearings in the wood. I told Uvo, and
it happened to be true, that I had been wondering why on earth he would
not come up north with me next day. And before midnight he had packed.

Then we sat up together for the last time in that back room of his on
the first floor, and watched the moon set in the tree-tops, and silver
leaves twinkle as the wood sighed in its sleep. One more pipe, and the
black sky was turning grey. A few more pipes, much talk about old times,
and the wood was a wood once more; its tossing crests were tipped with
emeralds in the flashing sun; and as tree after tree broke into a merry
din, we spoke of joy-bells taken up by steeple after steeple, and Uvo
read me eight lines that he had discovered somewhere while I was away.

"Some cry up Gunnersbury,
For Sion some declare,
And some say that with Chiswick House
No villa can compare;

"But ask the beaux of Middlesex,
Who know the country well,
If Witching Hill--if Witching Hill--
Don't bear away the bell."

"I hope you agree, Beau Gillon?" said Uvo, with the old wilful smile.
"By the way, I haven't mentioned him since you've been back, but on a
last morning like this you may be glad to hear that my old ghost of the
soil is laid at last.... The rest is silence, if you don't mind, old
man."

THE END

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