their approach, then scoured on as soon as it amounted to a pledge that
he would not be deserted. There was no faltering on his part.

The river, little more than a brook at Arthur's Bridge, is wide enough
here to deserve its name. The grove of oaks which one sees from the
Ranger's Lodge hides the water from view. But Gwendolen has it in her
mind, and with it a fear that the dog's owner will be found drowned. It
was there that her brother Frank died four years since, and was found in
the deep pool above the stepping-stones, caught in a tangle of weed and
hidden, after two days' search for him far and wide. If that is to be
the story we shall know, this time, by the dog's stopping there.
Therefore none would hint at an abandonment of the search having come
thus far, even were he of the mind to run counter to the wish of the
young lady from the Castle. None dares to do this, and the party
follows her across the stretch of gorse and bracken called the Warren to
the wood beyond. There the dog has stopped, waiting eagerly, showing by
half-starts and returns that he knows he would be lost to sight if he
were too quick afoot. For the wood is dark in front of him and the
boughs hang low.

"Nigh enough to where I set my eye on him at the first of it, last
evening," says old Stephen. He makes no reference to the affair of the
gunshot. Better forgotten perhaps!

But he is to remember that gunshot, many a wakeful night. For the
forecast of a mishap in that fatal pool is soon to be dissipated. As the
party draws nearer the dog runs back in his eagerness, then forward
again. And then Lady Gwendolen follows him into the wood, and the men
follow her in silence. Each has some anticipation in his mind--a thing
to be silent about.

There is a dip in the ground ahead, behind which Achilles disappears.
Another moment and he is back again, crying wildly with excitement. The
girl quickens a pace that has flagged on the rising ground; for they
have come quickly. And now she stands on the edge of a buttress-wall
that was once the boundary--so says tradition--of an amphitheatre of
sacrifice. Twenty yards on yonder is the Druids' altar, or the top of
it. For the ground has climbed up stone and wall for fifteen hundred
years, and the moss is deep on both; rich with a green no dye can rival,
for the soaking of yesterday's rain is on it still. But she can see
nothing for the moment, for the dog has leapt the wall and vanished.

"'Tis down belo