They had drawn towards the margin of the heath. Southwards it sloped to the rim of a great pine forest, that seemed to clasp it with ebonian arms. The place was black, mysterious, impenetrable, fringed with a palisading of dark stiff trunks, but all else, a vast undulation of sombre plumes. Its spires waved with the wind. There was a soundless awe about its sable galleries, a saturnine gloom that hung like a curtain. In the vague distance, a misty height seemed to struggle above the ocean of trees, like the back of some great beast. Yeoland, keen of face, reined in her jennet, and pointed Jaspar to this landscape of sombre hues. There was an alert lustre in her eyes; she drew her breath more quickly, like one whose courage kindles at the cry of a trumpet. "The Black Wild," she said with a little hiss of eagerness, and a glance that was almost fierce under her coal-black brows. Jaspar shook his head with the cumbersome wit of an ogre. "Ha, yes, madame, a bloody region, packed with rumours, dark as its own trees; no stint of terror, I warrant ye. See yonder, the road to Gilderoy." The girl in the green cloak seemed strongly stirred by her own thoughts. Her face had a wild elfin look for the moment, a beautiful and daring insolence that deified her figure. "And Gilderoy?" she said abstractedly. "Gilderoy lies south-east; Gambrevault south-west many leagues. Southwards, one would find the sea, in due season. Eastwards, we touch Geraint, and the Roman road." Yeoland nodded as though her mind were already adamant in the matter. "We will take to the forest," ran her decretal. Here was crass sentiment extravagantly in the ascendant, mad wilfulness pinioning forth like a bat into gloom. Jaspar screwed his mouth into a red knot, blinked and waxed argumentative with a vehemence that did his circumspection credit. "A mad scheme." "What better harbour for the night than yonder trees?" "Who will choose us a road? I pray you consider it." Yeoland answered him quietly enough. She had set her will on the venture, was in a desperate mood, and could therefore scorn reason. "Jaspar, my friend," she said, "I am in a wild humour, and ripe for the wild region. Peril pleases me. The unknown ever draweth the heart, making promise of greater, stranger things. What have I to lose? If you play the craven, I can go alone." III The avenues of the pine forest engulfed the harper and the lady. The myriad crowded trunks hemmed them with a stubborn and impassive gloom. A faint wind moved in the tree-tops. Dim aisles struck into an ever-deepening mystery of shadow, as into the dark mazes of a dream.