the wood, rejoicing in the airy green of the ash-trees above them and shouting as they ran.  But presently cypresses and sombre yews rose on either side of the path, and the road to Wych Maries was soft and silent, and the serene sun was lost, and their whispering footsteps forbade them to shout any more.  At the bottom of the hill the trees increased in number and variety; the sun shone through pale oak-leaves and the warm green of sycamores.  Nevertheless a sadness haunted the wood, where the red campions made only a mist of colour with no reality of life and flowers behind.

“This wood’s awfully jolly, isn’t it?” said Mark, hoping to gain from Esther’s agreement the dispersal of his gloom.

“I don’t care for it much,” she replied.  “There doesn’t seem to be any life in it.”

“I heard a cuckoo just now,” said Mark.

“Yes, out of tune already.”

“Mm, rather out of tune.  Mind those nettles,” he warned her.

“I thought Stephen said he drove here.”

“Perhaps we’ve come the wrong way.  I believe the road forked by the ash wood above.  Anyway if we go toward the sun we shall come out in the valley, and we can walk back along the banks of the river to Wychford.”

“We can always go back through the wood,” said Esther.

“Yes, if you don’t mind going back the way you came.”

“Come on,” she snapped.  She was not going to be laughed at by Mark, and she dared him to deny that he was not as much aware as herself of an eeriness in the atmosphere.

“Only because it seems dark in here after that dazzling sunlight on the wold.  Hark!  I hear the sound of water.”

They struggled through the undergrowth toward the sound; soon from a steep wooded bank they were gazing down into a millpool, the surface of which reflected with a gloomy deepening of their hue the colour but not the form of the trees above.  Water was flowing through a rotten sluice gate down from the level of the stream upon a slimy water-wheel that must have been out of action for many years.

“The dark tarn of Auber in the misty mid region of Weir!” Mark exclaimed.  “Don’t you love Ulalume?  I think it’s about my favourite poem.”

“Never heard of it,” Esther replied indifferently.  He might have taken advantage of this confession to give her a lecture on poetry, if the millpool and the melancholy wood had not been so affecting as to make the least attempt at literary exposition impertinent.

“And there’s the chapel,” Mark exclaimed, pointing to a ruined edifice of stone, the walls of which were stained with the damp of years rising from the pool.  “But how shall we reach it?  We must have come the wrong way.”

“Let’s go back!  Let’s go back!” Esther exclaimed, surrendering to the command of an intuition that overcame her pride.  “This place is unlucky.”