by its mother and a cluster of startled doe, the stag going
last at a slow trot.

I rose to my feet and saw how long the shadows were. In truth, it was
time to be up and moving. So, arousing Pierrebon, we were soon mounted
and jogging through the woods, with our backs to the west. We made
good way now, for the nags were refreshed; yet we knew not where the
night would bring us, for we were wholly lost.

Farther and farther we rode into the woods, holding desperately on to a
faint track that wound and twisted through the endless aisles of the
forest. As the hour grew later the sky overhead changed from blue to
crimson and gold, and the sunset, stabbing through the lace-work of
branches overhead, cast ruddy lights on the trees, deepening the
shadows, and giving a ghostly distance to objects around, so that we
seemed in a fairy realm of enchantment.

As the sunset began to fade, and the red and gold overhead changed
softly to purple and grey, over which the silver light of the moon
would soon be cast, we decreased our speed, and now, riding side by
side, peered anxiously into the wood for some sign of a human
habitation; but there was none to be seen.

We rode in silence, for Pierrebon, to say truth, was uneasy at the
uncanny stillness, and that awe with which Nature in her lonely
grandeur inspires the dullest of mortals had begun to fill us. And so
no word was spoken.

In and out the track wound, until at last it brought us to the very
heart of the forest, where the shadows lay black and deep. Around us
on every side the huge and aged trees, stretching in long lines of
receding obscurity, stood like a phantom army of giants guarding some
dreadful secret of the past. Twisted, distorted, and bent, with hairy,
moss-grown trunks from which the decaying bark peeled like the
mouldering cement on some old and forgotten ruin, the kings of the
forest stood silent and grim, their branches stretched out in grisly
menace--giant arms that threatened death to all who approached.

Deeper and yet more deep we rode into the gloom, though the sunset yet
clung in a girdle of fire round the horizon, casting red blades of
light between the tree trunks; and Pierrebon's cheek grew pale, for
goblin and gnome and fay lived to him, and even I, who did not believe,
felt if my sword played freely in my sheath. And then I tried to sing.

But so dismal were the echoes, so lowering the aspect of the mighty
trees, that seemed, in the qu