e
we came home. It was in the wood that lies at the right--the other wood
is called the forest; they say in old times it was eight miles long,
northward up the shore of the lake, and full of deer; with a forester,
and a reeve, and a verderer, and all that. Your brother was older than
you; he went to India, or the Colonies; is he living still?"

"I care not."

"That's good-natured, at all events; but do you know?"

"Not I; and what matter? If he's living, I warrant he has his share of
the curse, the sweat of his brow and his bitter crust; and if he is
dead, he's dust or worse, he's rotten, and smells accordingly."

Sir Bale looked at him; for this was the brother over whom, only a year
or two ago, Philip used to cry tears of pathetic longing. Feltram looked
darkly in his face, and sneered with a cold laugh.

"I suppose you mean to jest?" said Sir Bale.

"Not I; it is the truth. It is what you'd say, if you were honest. If
he's alive, let him keep where he is; and if he's dead, I'll have none
of him, body or soul. Do you hear that sound?"

"Like the wind moaning in the forest?"

"Yes."

"But I feel no wind. There's hardly a leaf stirring."

"I think so," said Feltram. "Come along."

And he began striding up the gentle slope of the glen, with many a rock
peeping through its sward, and tufted ferns and furze, giving a wild and
neglected character to the scene; the background of which, where the
glen loses itself in a distant turn, is formed by its craggy and wooded
side.

Up they marched, side by side, in silence, towards that irregular clump
of trees, to which Feltram had pointed from the Mardykes side.

As they approached, it showed more scattered, and two or three of the
trees were of grander dimensions than in the distance they had appeared;
and as they walked, the broad valley of Cloostedd Forest opened grandly
on their left, studding the sides of the valley with solitary trees or
groups, which thickened as it descended to the broad level, in parts
nearly three miles wide, on which stands the noble forest of Cloostedd,
now majestically reposing in the stirless air, gilded and flushed with
the melancholy tints of autumn.

I am now going to relate wonderful things; but they rest on the report,
strangely consistent, it is true, of Sir Bale Mardykes. That all his
senses, however, were sick and feverish, and his brain not quite to be
relied on at that moment, is a fact of which sceptics have a right to
mak