Then Deborah, walking alone in the shade of evening, came on the outskirts of a dense forest. The foliage within was thick and feathery, the branches heavy and dark. Above there hung a cloud so black that it sent a dull shadow through the dull leaves, and made the ground below blacker than itself. Just outside the cloud, where the sky was pale with the after-glow of clear evening, shone a star, a very large and bright one. But the cloud was so heavy that it hung over the whole forest like some dark curse. It looked like a thunder-cloud that could not burst, being held by iron chains covered with black rust. There was unutterable silence in the forest, so that you looked in with a strange fear, and then turned away, and yet again returned. Surely no living thing stirred or breathed in there! [Footnote 1: There are indications in the paging of this chapter in MS. that it was written separately from the previous chapters. It was afterwards added and the connection is obviously incomplete. To this state of incompletion may be referred the indefiniteness of the conclusion, though it may have been also part of the author’s deliberate intention.—ED. NOTE.] A great dampness rose from the ground, a vapour in the gathering twilight, as it rises in the marshy districts near the sea. Now a bat whirled out from the gloom on to the lonely flats, and then came a sound like the hoot of an owl. But was it an owl? Oh, no. It was one more “exceeding bitter cry,” at the bitter end, you know. Then, there is life in the breathless forest after all. The cry was repeated, louder and clearer, and it died away, you know how, just as if it wanted somehow or other to cling on to life. You didn’t like to hear the end of that last cry; it was so inarticulate that it spoke. But it ended at last, as all such end. What had happened to it? It had fallen among the black leaves. It had touched the black water. There is a very still Deep in the Silent Forest, and its waters run slowly but surely. It’s part of the curse, you know, raindrops distilled from the Black Cloud. It was only one of many deeps, but the silence had fallen again, even deeper it seemed than before, till a breeze swept over the tops of the trees, and here is what it sang as it passed:— “This is the Forest of Failure. Here is the Humiliation Vale. It is filled with tears which are never seen, and sighs that are never heard. All mankind has to tread it—now or then—now or then—willy-nilly—each man treads it, and alone, now or then.” Deborah saw a gate and passed in. And over the gate there was a prayer written, just as we see writing through a looking-glass. “I ought to know that prayer,” she thought. “It is the Lord’s Prayer,” said a voice. “No. I think it is too short,” and the gate clanged to with a horrible grate.