ouldering Roman walls, and then, skirting the
deserted, echoing village, they came out on a broad white turnpike road,
and the limestone dust followed them like a cloud. Then, suddenly, they
turned to the north by such a road as Edward had never seen before. It
was so narrow that there was barely room for the cart to pass, and the
footway was of rock, and the banks rose high above them as they slowly
climbed the long, steep way, and the untrimmed hedges on either side
shut out the light. And the ferns grew thick and green upon the banks,
and hidden wells dripped down upon them; and the old man told him how
the lane in winter was a torrent of swirling water, so that no one
could pass by it. On they went, ascending and then again descending,
always in that deep hollow under the wild woven boughs, and the boy
wondered vainly what the country was like on either side. And now the
air grew darker, and the hedge on one bank was but the verge of a dark
and rustling wood, and the grey limestone rocks had changed to dark-red
earth flecked with green patches and veins of marl, and suddenly in the
stillness from the depths of the wood a bird began to sing a melody that
charmed the heart into another world, that sang to the child's soul of
the blessed faery realm beyond the woods of the earth, where the wounds
of man are healed. And so at last, after many turnings and windings,
they came to a high bare land where the lane broadened out into a kind
of common, and along the edge of this place there were scattered three
or four old cottages, and one of them was a little tavern. Here they
stopped, and a man came out and tethered the tired horse to a post and
gave him water; and old Mr. Darnell took the child's hand and led him by
a path across the fields. The boy could see the country now, but it was
all a strange, undiscovered land; they were in the heart of a wilderness
of hills and valleys that he had never looked upon, and they were going
down a wild, steep hillside, where the narrow path wound in and out
amidst gorse and towering bracken, and the sun gleaming out for a
moment, there was a gleam of white water far below in a narrow valley,
where a little brook poured and rippled from stone to stone. They went
down the hill, and through a brake, and then, hidden in dark-green
orchards, they came upon a long, low whitewashed house, with a stone
roof strangely coloured by the growth of moss and lichens. Mr. Darnell
knocked at a heavy oak