The whole figure was one of grace and calmness, strangely out of keeping with the human agony around. Why, even now, through the clear robe appeared a face of such exceeding torture that it sent a sickly feeling to the heart. Then suddenly the white robes turned to a dusky black and hid the pale, hopeless features. “Don’t you know me, Deborah?” “Well,” thought Deborah, “it’s just as if someone were playing the ‘Frühlingslied’ backwards. I know that voice, and yet I don’t.” But aloud she said,— “I expect if you were to tell me who you are I should perhaps remember you.” At this the Spirit laughed, and Deborah started, for of all places in which to hear such a sound that seemed the most unlikely, and moreover, the alteration in the face was so complete that it was almost dazzling. “This is a very heartless Spirit,” thought she. “I could not have laughed in this wood, not for anything. The agony is too sacred.” And, as if interpreting her thoughts, the Spirit answered, “Let us walk out of the Forest on to the Moors. They are lonely and cold, and the night wind is keen. We can hear, and see, and understand better there.” And he led the way by some unknown path on to a high moorland dotted with crags, with hills rising black in the distance. Stars were shining bright in the clear sky, for it had deepened to that length of twilight which approaches night. A crescent moon rose over the irregular bank of mountains—the narrowest, clearest crescent, like a thin slit in the blue-grey heaven. Over there was the sound of running water. How different from the deep gurgle of the wood! And there the white splashing of a waterfall over a rocky bed. There was a clump of fir trees and the smell of the pine forest; and there—oh! what was that? Oh! only another bitter cry, and you thought it was the cry of a dog or wolf in the autumn’s frosty distance. “One hears very plainly on this moorland,” observed the Spirit, and smiled again. “This is the sounding board and mirror of the world. One hears and sees. One pays a pretty dear price, but I think it is the one of the few things that returns full value.” Deborah was silent. The moor was so unutterably lonely; a vaster loneliness than the forest; it did not stifle, it awed. “Look over there,” pointed the Spirit, “where the sky is hidden by the black billows of cloud. That inky pile is always there. Below it you see the gloomy mass of the forest boundary. Black, black, always black. Now I will hold this wing of my robe with my hand, so. Look through it towards the Silent Wood. What do you see?” “Bubbles of light floating here and there at intervals amongst the trees.” “Will-o’-the-wisps. Here—there—up and down—now quick, now slow. Watch and listen earnestly.”