n in appearance that it
looked like a survival of the Druid age. There was not an opening to
be seen in its thick undergrowth, nor any sign of path or track
through it, but it was with a mutual consent and understanding that we
made our way into its intense silence.

CHAPTER XVII

HUMFREY DE KNAYTHVILLE

In order to arrive at a proper understanding of the peculiar
circumstances and position in which Miss Raven and myself very shortly
found ourselves placed, it is necessary to give some information as to
the geographical situation of the wood into which we plunged, more I
think, out of a mingled feeling of curiosity and mystery than of
anything else. We had then walked several miles from Ravensdene Court
in a northerly direction, but instead of keeping to the direct line of
the cliffs and headlands we had followed an inland track along the
moors, which, however, was never at any point of its tortuous way more
than a mile from the coast. The last mile or two of this had been
through absolute solitudes--save for a lonely farmstead, or shepherd's
cottage, seen far off on the rising ground, further inland, we had not
seen a sign of human habitation. Nor that afternoon did we see any
sail on the broad stretch of sea at our right, nor even the
smoke-trail of any passing steamer on the horizon. Yet the place we
now approached seemed even more solitary. We came to a sort of ravine,
a deep fissure in the line of the land, on the south side of which lay
the wood of ancient oak of which I have spoken. Beyond it, on the
northern side, the further edge of this ravine rose steeply, masses
of scarred limestone jutting out of its escarpments; it seemed to me
that at the foot of the wood and in the deepest part of this natural
declension, there would be a burn, a stream, that ran downwards from
the moor to the sea. I think we had some idea of getting down to this,
following its course to its outlet on the beach, and returning
homeward by way of the sands.

The wood into which we made our way was well-nigh impregnable; it
seemed to me that for age upon age its undergrowth had run riot,
untrimmed, unchecked, until at last it had become a matted growth of
interwoven, strangely twisted boughs and tendrils. It was only by
turning in first one, then another direction through it that we made
any progress in the downward direction we desired; sometimes it was a
matter of forcing one's way between the thickly twisted obstacles. We
e