or the foot of man. He entered such a
lane not knowing where it might bring him, hoping he had found the way to
fairyland, to the woods beyond the world, to that vague territory that
haunts all the dreams of a boy. He could not tell where he might be, for
the high banks rose steep, and the great hedges made a green vault above.
Marvelous ferns grew rich and thick in the dark red earth, fastening
their roots about the roots of hazel and beech and maple, clustering like
the carven capitals of a cathedral pillar. Down, like a dark shaft, the
lane dipped to the well of the hills, and came amongst the limestone
rocks. He climbed the bank at last, and looked out into a country that
seemed for a moment the land he sought, a mysterious realm with
unfamiliar hills and valleys and fair plains all golden, and white houses
radiant in the sunset light.

And he thought of the steep hillsides where the bracken was like a wood,
and of bare places where the west wind sang over the golden gorse, of
still circles in mid-lake, of the poisonous yew-tree in the middle of
the wood, shedding its crimson cups on the dank earth. How he lingered by
certain black waterpools hedged on every side by drooping wych-elms and
black-stemmed alders, watching the faint waves widening to the banks as a
leaf or a twig dropped from the trees.

And the whole air and wonder of the ancient forest came back to him. He
had found his way to the river valley, to the long lovely hollow between
the hills, and went up and up beneath the leaves in the warm hush of
midsummer, glancing back now and again through the green alleys, to the
river winding in mystic esses beneath, passing hidden glens receiving the
streams that rushed down the hillside, ice-cold from the rock, passing
the immemorial tumulus, the graves where the legionaries waited for the
trumpet, the grey farmhouses sending the blue wreaths of wood smoke into
the still air. He went higher and higher, till at last he entered the
long passage of the Roman road, and from this, the ridge and summit of
the wood, he saw the waves of green swell and dip and sink towards the
marshy level and the gleaming yellow sea. He looked on the surging
forest, and thought of the strange deserted city moldering into a petty
village on its verge, of its encircling walls melting into the turf, of
vestiges of an older temple which the earth had buried utterly.

It was winter now, for he heard the wail of the wind, and a sudden gust