y hesitation, with a little spring, it
rose and winged its way in the same direction which the other birds had
taken, and was quickly lost in thick forest to the left.

"Here," said Feltram, "this is the tree."

"I remember it well! A gigantic trunk; and, yes, those marks; but I
never before read them as letters. Yes, H.F., so they are--very odd I
should not have remarked them. They are so large, and so strangely
drawn-out in some places, and filled-in in others, and distorted, and
the moss has grown about them; I don't wonder I took them for natural
cracks and chasms in the bark," said Sir Bale.

"Very like," said Feltram.

Sir Bale had remarked, ever since they had begun their walk from the
shore, that Feltram seemed to undergo a gloomy change. Sharper, grimmer,
wilder grew his features, and shadow after shadow darkened his face
wickedly.

The solitude and grandeur of the forest, and the repulsive gloom of his
companion's countenance and demeanour, communicated a tone of anxiety to
Sir Bale; and they stood still, side by side, in total silence for a
time, looking toward the forest glades; between themselves and which, on
the level sward of the valley, stood many a noble tree and fantastic
group of forked birch and thorn, in the irregular formations into which
Nature had thrown them.

"Now you stand between the letters. Cast your eyes on the stone," said
Feltram suddenly, and his low stern tones almost startled the Baronet.

Looking round, he perceived that he had so placed himself that his point
of vision was exactly from between the two great letters, now
half-obliterated, which he had been scrutinizing just as he turned about
to look toward the forest of Cloostedd.

"Yes, so I am," said Sir Bale.

There was within him an excitement and misgiving, akin to the sensation
of a man going into battle, and which corresponded with the pale and
sombre frown which Feltram wore, and the manifest change which had come
over him.

"Look on the stone steadily for a time, and tell me if you see a black
mark, about the size of your hand, anywhere upon its surface," said
Feltram.

Sir Bale affected no airs of scepticism now; his imagination was
stirred, and a sense of some unknown reality at the bottom of that which
he had affected to treat before as illusion, inspired a strange interest
in the experiment.

"Do you see it?" asked Feltram.

Sir Bale was watching patiently, but he had observed nothing of the
kind.