“It looks like a hand,” said he.  “By Jove, it is a hand—­pointing towards the forest with a finger.”

“Don’t mind the finger; look only on that black blurred mark, and from the point where you stand, taking that point for your direction, look to the forest.  Take some tree or other landmark for an object, enter the forest there, and pursue the same line, as well as you can, until you find little flowers with leaves like wood-sorrel, and with tall stems and a red blossom, not larger than a drop, such as you have not seen before, growing among the trees, and follow wherever they seem to grow thickest, and there you will find him.”

All the time that Feltram was making this little address, Sir Bale was endeavouring to fix his route by such indications as Feltram described; and when he had succeeded in quite establishing the form of a peculiar tree—­a melancholy ash, one huge limb of which had been blasted by lightning, and its partly stricken arm stood high and barkless, stretching its white fingers, as it were, in invitation into the forest, and signing the way for him——­

“I have it now,” said he.  “Come Feltram, you’ll come a bit of the way with me.”

Feltram made no answer, but slowly shook his head, and turned and walked away, leaving Sir Bale to undertake his adventure alone.

The strange sound they had heard from the midst of the forest, like the rumble of a storm or the far-off trembling of a furnace, had quite ceased.  Not a bird was hopping on the grass, or visible on bough or in the sky.  Not a living creature was in sight—­never was stillness more complete, or silence more oppressive.

It would have been ridiculous to give way to the old reluctance which struggled within him.  Feltram had strode down the slope, and was concealed by a screen of bushes from his view.  So alone, and full of an interest quite new to him, he set out in quest of his adventures.

CHAPTER XX

The Haunted Forest

Sir Bale Mardykes walked in a straight line, by bush and scaur, over the undulating ground, to the blighted ash-tree; and as he approached it, its withered bough stretched more gigantically into the air, and the forest seemed to open where it pointed.

He passed it by, and in a few minutes had lost sight of it again, and was striding onward under the shadow of the forest, which already enclosed him.  He was directing his march with all the care he could, in exactly that line which, according to Feltram’s rule, had been laid down for him.  Now and then, having, as soldiers say, taken an object, and fixed it well in his memory, he would pause and look about him.

As a boy he had never entered the wood so far; for he was under a prohibition, lest he should lose himself in its intricacies, and be benighted there.  He had often heard that it was haunted ground, and that too would, when a boy, have deterred him.  It was on this account that the scene was so new to him, and that he cared so often to stop and look about him.  Here and there a vista opened, exhibiting the same utter desertion, and opening farther perspectives through the tall stems of the trees faintly visible in the solemn shadow.  No flowers could he see, but once or twice a wood anemone, and now and then a tiny grove of wood-sorrel.