Some years ago on an early autumn afternoon two ladies, Miss Smith and Miss Raven, fashion designers to the firm of Kirsome & Gooting, Sloane Street, London, set out from Norwich for a tramp into the country. Both girls--for they were only girls--were typically modern; that is to say, they were bonny and athletic, and, despite the sedentary nature of their vocation, extremely fond of outdoor life. Miss Raven, the elder of the two, was nice-looking without perhaps being actually pretty; but Miss Smith was undeniably a beauty. Had she been a lady of title or an actress, all the society papers would have been full of her. She did not, however, crave for notoriety; she was quite content with the homage of most of the young men whom she knew, and the unspoken admiration of many men whom she did not know, but who looked at her out of doors or sat near to her in theatres and restaurants. She was much attached to Miss Raven, and as the two strode along, swinging their arms, their tongues wagged merrily and without intermission. On and on, down one hill and up another, past wood and brook and hamlet they went, till a gradual fading of the light warned them it was about time to think of turning back. "We must go as far as that old ruin," Miss Raven said, pointing to a tumble-down white building that nestled close to a winding stream. "I've never seen anything quite so picturesque." "And I've never seen anything quite so weird," Miss Smith replied. "I'm not at all sure I like it. Besides, I'm desperately thirsty. I want my tea. We'd much better go home." They had an argument, and it was eventually agreed that they should go on--but not beyond a certain point. "Not an inch farther, mind," Miss Smith said, "or I'll turn back and leave you." The ruin lay in a hollow, and as the two girls descended the slope leading to it, a mist rose from the ground as if to greet them. They quickened their steps, and, approaching nearer, perceived a mill wheel--the barest skeleton, crowned with moss and ferns and dripping with slime. The pool into which it dripped was overgrown in places with reeds and chickweed, but was singularly bare and black in the centre, and suggestive of very great depth. Weeping willows bordered the stream, and their sloping, stunted forms were gradually growing more and more indistinct in the oncoming mist. The space in front of the house, once, no doubt, a prettily cultivated garden, was now full of rank grass and weeds, and dotted here and there with unsightly mounds consisting of fallen bricks and mortar. Some of these mounds, long, low, and narrow, were unpleasantly suggestive of graves, whilst the atmosphere of the place, the leaden-hued and mystic atmosphere, charged to the utmost with the smell of decayed trees and mouldy walls, might well have been that of an ancient churchyard. A sense of insufferable gloom, utterly different from any they had ever before experienced, took possession of the two girls.