After this little episode they walked on again, and for a while very soberly, Tony busily engaged in picking up stones and spars in search of some rare specimen that might please his father, Betty still clinging to the basket, though her arm was aching with the weight of it.  By the time they at last reached the woods they were all rather tired and distinctly hungry, but they were never too tired or hungry to be roused to enthusiasm by the sight that met them there.  No mere words can depict the charm and beauty of Wenmere Woods.  No one can thoroughly appreciate them who has not actually seen them.  No one who has seen them can forget them.  To see them was to stand with a glad heart, speechless, wide-eyed, wondering, and thanking God for such a sanctuary, yet half incredulous that such a spot was real, was there always, untouched, undefiled, waiting for one.  It might have been a fairy place, that would fade and vanish as soon as one turned one’s eyes away.

The woods were of no great extent, the trees were of no great size, but, tall and graceful, they clothed the side of the hill without a break down to the very edge of the river which ran through a valley which was fairyland itself, and on the opposite side stretched away, almost from the river’s brink, up, and up, and up, until to all seeming they met the sky.  Delicate, feathery larches and quivering birches they were for the most part, and here and there, underneath their spreading branches, were open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be.  In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river’s brink, gleamed little bays of silver-white sand.

In Dr. Trenire’s library were several large bound volumes of Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” illustrated by Gustav Dore, and Kitty had never a doubt in her mind that these were the woods the artist had depicted.  There could be no others like them.  Here Enid rode with Launcelot by her side; on that silvery beach, where the old bleached tree trunk lay as it must have lain for generations, Vivien had sat at Merlin’s feet.  There, in that space carpeted by wind-flowers and primroses, Queen Guinevere and Launcelot had said their last farewells.

To Kitty the whole beautiful spot was redolent of them.  They had been there, ridden and walked, talked and laughed, loved, wept, and parted; and in that beauty and mystery and silence it seemed to her that some day, any day, they all would come again.  They were only sleeping somewhere, waiting for some spell to be removed.  She was sure of it, as sure as she was that King Arthur sat sleeping in his hidden cave, spellbound until some one, brave and good and strong enough, should find him and blow a huge blast on the horn which lay on the table before him, and so waken him from his long magic sleep.  In her heart of hearts she had a secret conviction that some day she would find the magic cave, and Dan it would be who would possess the power to blow the magic horn.