the first gleam of the dawn the music ceased amid mocking
laughter, the vision of lovely woodland vanished away, and in the grey
light they found themselves on the quaking green edges of a deep and
dangerous marsh. Hilary, when he saw this, groaned in spirit and said:
"O dear sons, we have deserved this befooling and misguidance, for have
we not forgotten the behest of our Master, 'Watch and pray lest ye
enter into temptation'?"

Now when after much toilsomeness they had won clear of that foul tract
of morass and quagmire, they came upon vast herds of swine grubbing
beneath the oaks, and with them savage-looking swineherds scantily clad
in skins. Still further north they caught sight of the squalid hovels
and wood piles of charcoal burners; and still they pursued their way
till they cleared the dense forest and beheld before them a long range
of hills blue in the distant air. Towards sundown they came on a stony
moorland, rough with heather and bracken and tufts of bent; and when
there was but one long band of red light parting the distant land from
the low sky, they descried a range of thick posts standing high and
black against the red in the heavens. As they drew near, these, they
discovered, were the huge granite pillars of a great ring of stone and
of an avenue which led up to it; and in the midst of the ring was a
mighty flat stone borne up on three stout pillars, so that it looked
like a wondrous stone house of some strong folk of the beginning of
days.

"This, too, companions," said Hilary, "is a temple of false gods. Very
ancient gods of a world gone by are these, and it may be they have been
long dead like their worshippers, and their names are no more spoken in
the world. Further we may not go this night; but on these stones we
shall put the sign of the blessed tree of our redemption, and in its
shelter shall we sleep."

As they slept that night in the lee of the stones Hilary saw in a dream
the place wherein they lay; and the great stones, he was aware, were
not true stones of the rock, but petrified trees, and in his spirit he
knew that these trees of stone were growths of that Forbidden Tree with
the fruit of which the Serpent tempted our first mother in Paradise.
On the morrow when they rose, he strove to overthrow the huge pillars,
but to this labour their strength was not equal.

This same day was the day of St. John, the longest in all the year, and
they travelled far, till at last in the lo