e no less harassed and
anxious than Brook herself.

'Yes,' said Rhoda.

'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young farmer's
wife went on. 'It is so mysterious! I do hope it will not be an
incurable wound. I have again been thinking of what they said about
Conjuror Trendle. I don't really believe in such men, but I should not
mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no account must my
husband know. Is it far to where he lives?'

'Yes--five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly. 'In the heart of Egdon.'

'Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the
way--say to-morrow afternoon?'

'O, not I--that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in
the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most
useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.

Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving.
Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand
in the way of a possible remedy for her patron's strange affliction. It
was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should
meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was
visible from the spot where they now stood.

CHAPTER V--CONJUROR TRENDLE

By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid
fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible
light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in
the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.

She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half-
an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the
Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight figure,
cloaked and veiled, was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost with a
shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.

They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb
into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich
alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before. It was a long walk;
thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early
afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath--not
improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of t