Presently I wandered off alone, and went out of the city with a sudden impulse. I thought I would go in the opposite direction to that by which I had entered it. I could see the great hills down which Cynthia and I had made our way in the dawn; but I had never gone in the further direction, where there stretched what seemed to be a great forest. The whole place lay bathed in a calm light, all unutterably beautiful. I wandered long by streams and wood-ends, every corner that I turned revealing new prospects of delight. I came at last to the edge of the forest, the mouths of little open glades running up into it, with fern and thorn-thickets. There were deer here browsing about the dingles, which let me come close to them and touch them, raising their heads from the grass, and regarding me with gentle and fearless eyes. Birds sang softly among the boughs, and even fluttered to my shoulder, as if pleased to be noticed. So this was what was called on earth the place of torment, a place into which it seemed as if nothing of sorrow or pain could ever intrude! Just on the edge of the wood stood a little cottage, surrounded by a quiet garden, bees humming about the flowers, the scents of which came with a homely sweetness on the air. But here I saw something which I did not at first understand. This was a group of three people, a man and a woman and a boy of about seventeen, beside the cottage porch. They had a rustic air about them, and the same sort of leisurely look that all the people of the land wore. They were all three beautiful, with a simple and appropriate kind of beauty, such as comes of a contented sojourn in the open air. But I became in a moment aware that there was a disturbing element among them. The two elders seemed to be trying to persuade the boy, who listened smilingly enough, but half turned away from them, as though he were going away on some errand of which they did not approve. They greeted me, as I drew near, with the same cordiality as one received everywhere, and the man said, "Perhaps you can help us, sir, for we are in a trouble?" The woman joined with a murmur in the request, and I said I would gladly do what I could; while I spoke, the boy watched me earnestly, and something drew me to him, because I saw a look that seemed to tell me that he was, like myself, a stranger in the place. Then the man said, "We have lived here together very happily a long time, we three--I do not know how we came together, but so it was; and we have been more at ease than words can tell, after hard lives in the other world; and now this lad here, who has been our delight, says that he must go elsewhere and cannot stay with us; and we would persuade him if we could; and perhaps you, sir, who no doubt know what lies beyond the fields and woods that we see, can satisfy him that it is better to remain."