There is something I do not like about a deep tangled forest, and that is the lack of sunshine. The light is green and cool, and at intervals you will see a thin beautiful shaft of yellow spearing down from an opening far above; but unless you come to a glade there is no chance of catching a glimpse of the sun in its glory riding the blue fleece-clouded sky, and without the sun I feel lonely and somehow half-lost. It is why I would make an indifferent watcher, for they must wake by night and sleep by day. I am a sun-worshipper of the first order. I need its blazing all about me in order to be wholly myself. Of all woodlands, the least lovely is the Fearful Forest. As I have said, its trees are spaced evenly as though they had been planted by someone in the far olden times. Their wide leaves are dark blue-green with emerald veins running beneath the surface. Their boles are thick and have rough hard bark, unlike the smooth-skinned tree ferns of Sunset Fields. Between their roots orange and black mushrooms and strange pale sick-looking fungi lurk, and crawling upward toward the invisible sun go lichens of every hue from mauve to sanguine. Where the branches begin there is a riot of parasitical growths, thick vines and murderous mistletoe, climbing plants that bear huge trumpets of orchids, every sort of disagreeable creeper that lives on the energy of its stronger brethren. All this vile vegetation makes an almost impenetrable roof over the whole Fearful Forest. On the ground between the trees lie heaps of long-decayed touchwood, squat thickets of brier, lightning-blasted limbs only beginning to crumble, and a deep soft carpet of dead things, from the half-dissolved flora of which peer white rib cases and gleaming, grinning skulls. The Fearful Forest reeks of death, of murdered animals and plants, of life that is not healthy nor productive of anything save more death. There are trails through the depths of this dismal woodland, paths made by bears or stags or the giant dogwolves that range in packs of a hundred. Smaller aisles are made by jackal-rats and the other lesser animals. Halfspoor was following a deep trench of a trail that ran almost straight toward the opposite side of the forest. * * * * * For a long while I followed this pathway, glancing at the ground now and again to be sure the knifetooth bear had not turned off; and my mind was oppressed against my will by thoughts of horror, generated, doubtless, in the dreary sunless vistas about me. Indeed, I would have gone back had it not been for the bold and idiotic plan I had conceived, of slaying Halfspoor single-handed. Several times a jackal-rat crossed my road, snarling at me, its scurfy brown hackles lifted. The third such loathsome beast I skewered with an arrow out of sheer dislike, retrieving my shaft before I passed on.