titanic worms. Over and above this draconian architecture of
the earth a veil of gray woods hung thinner like a vapor; woods which
the witchcraft of the sea had, as usual, both blighted and blown out of
shape. To the right the trees trailed along the sea front in a single
line, each drawn out in thin wild lines like a caricature. At the other
end of their extent they multiplied into a huddle of hunchbacked trees,
a wood spreading toward a projecting part of the high coast. It was here
that the sight appeared to which so many eyes and minds seemed to be
almost automatically turning.

Out of the middle of this low, and more or less level wood, rose three
separate stems that shot up and soared into the sky like a lighthouse
out of the waves or a church spire out of the village roofs. They formed
a clump of three columns close together, which might well be the mere
bifurcation, or rather trifurcation, of one tree, the lower part being
lost or sunken in the thick wood around. Everything about them suggested
something stranger and more southern than anything even in that last
peninsula of Britain which pushes out farthest toward Spain and Africa
and the southern stars. Their leathery leafage had sprouted in advance
of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another and
less natural green, tinged with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher.
But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering
over a herd of huddled and fleeing cattle.

"I am exceedingly sorry your girl is so unwell," said Vane shortly. "But
really--" and he strode down the steep road with plunging strides.

The boat was already secured to the little stone jetty, and the boatman,
a younger shadow of the woodcutter--and, indeed, a nephew of that useful
malcontent--saluted his territorial lord with the sullen formality of
the family. The Squire acknowledged it casually and had soon forgotten
all such things in shaking hands with the visitor who had just come
ashore. The visitor was a long, loose man, very lean to be so young,
whose long, fine features seemed wholly fitted together of bone and
nerve, and seemed somehow to contrast with his hair, that showed in
vivid yellow patches upon his hollow temples under the brim of his white
holiday hat. He was carefully dressed in exquisite taste, though he had
come straight from a considerable sea voyage; and he carried something
in his hand which in his long European travels, and even