We passed through a second village, and went on, over a rutty road, between high banks, persistently upwards. All the sounds of the world had died away, and the life of the woods, the rustle of leaves and of grasses, the long thick hum of the insects was dead. Nothing moved. Even the rain made no sound as it fell in great wet clouds upon the ground. High up on the rutty road we halted, while the two boys plunging downward through the bushes in the darkness drank of a silent stream which flowed below, the last water we should pass that night. The leaves of the bushes cut sharp green silhouettes upon the blackness, stiff and metallic as tinfoil, as the boys, lantern in hand, plunged downward. But we did not go, for the soft cloud of rain was falling thicker, wetter, and we were cold. When each had drunk his fill, and the metal green leaves of the bushes had flashed back into darkness again, we plodded on, over the common, under the trees, along another piece of road, looser, more rutty than the last, and definitely among the dripping trees we climbed upward. The moon was gone now, hidden deep behind the falling layers of cloud. And there was a hush, a stagnancy upon all things as though an unseen, unknown force were terrorising life to stillness. Not a tree had leave to stir. The branches huddled dumbly, and all the seething insect life which makes the woods so full of sound lay stricken, lay dumb, paralysed; and among the damp trees we journeyed on. * * * * * At midnight the horses stopped, in a fold of the hills on the edge of the trees, where the blackness lay solid, and we slid down. One boy tied the horses together and sat down patiently to await our return next morning. The other snuffed the candle in his paper lantern and prepared to lead the way. By this time it was raining hard, in distinct material drops, which splashed sharply on face and hands, and it was pitch dark. The boy, lantern in hand, went first, and all the light of the lantern so carefully trimmed was cut off from us by his stout round body. We knew by the crunch there were cinders under foot, by the cold wet dabs that ghost-like pressed our hands that there were bushes, and that we climbed.