Sharper, darker, more eager grew the face of Philip Feltram, as his eyes
traversed the surface of that huge horizontal block.

"Now?" asked Feltram again.

No, he had seen nothing.

Feltram was growing manifestly uneasy, angry almost; he walked away a
little, and back again, and then two or three times round the tree, with
his hands shut, and treading the ground like a man trying to warm his
feet, and so impatiently he returned, and looked again on the stone.

Sir Bale was still looking, and very soon said, drawing his brows
together and looking hard,

"Ha!--yes--hush. There it is, by Jove!--wait--yes--there; it is growing
quite plain."

It seemed not as if a shadow fell upon the stone, but rather as if the
stone became semi-transparent, and just under its surface was something
dark--a hand, he thought it--and darker and darker it grew, as if coming
up toward the surface, and after some little wavering, it fixed itself
movelessly, pointing, as he thought, toward the forest.

"It looks like a hand," said he. "By Jove, it is a hand--pointing
towards the forest with a finger."

"Don't mind the finger; look only on that black blurred mark, and from
the point where you stand, taking that point for your direction, look to
the forest. Take some tree or other landmark for an object, enter the
forest there, and pursue the same line, as well as you can, until you
find little flowers with leaves like wood-sorrel, and with tall stems
and a red blossom, not larger than a drop, such as you have not seen
before, growing among the trees, and follow wherever they seem to grow
thickest, and there you will find him."

All the time that Feltram was making this little address, Sir Bale was
endeavouring to fix his route by such indications as Feltram described;
and when he had succeeded in quite establishing the form of a peculiar
tree--a melancholy ash, one huge limb of which had been blasted by
lightning, and its partly stricken arm stood high and barkless,
stretching its white fingers, as it were, in invitation into the forest,
and signing the way for him----

"I have it now," said he. "Come Feltram, you'll come a bit of the way
with me."

Feltram made no answer, but slowly shook his head, and turned and walked
away, leaving Sir Bale to undertake his adventure alone.

The strange sound they had heard from the midst of the forest, like the
rumble of a storm or the far-off trembling of a furnace, had quite
ceased. Not a bird