There appeared to be no particular sight to spare any one. They stood in a group, gazing eagerly. The Dark Plain was stretched out before them, the bare patch of clear ground, the archway behind; all bright in the moonlight. No shadow or shade was to be seen. Charlotte Pain moved to the side of George Godolphin. "You told me I was fanciful this morning, when I said the Dark Plain put me in mind of a graveyard," she said to him in a half-whisper. "See it now! Those low bushes scattered about look precisely like grave-mounds." "But we know them to be bushes," returned George. "That is not the argument. I say they _look_ like it. If you brought a stranger here first by moonlight, and asked him what the Plain was, he would say a graveyard." "Thus it has ever been!" murmured Janet Godolphin to herself. "At the first coming of the Shadow, it will be here capriciously; visible one night, invisible the next: betokening that the evil has not yet arrived, that it is only hovering! You are sure you saw it, Miss Pain?" "I am quite sure that I saw a shadow, bearing a strange and distinct form, there, in front of the archway. But I am equally sure it is to be accounted for by natural causes. But that my eyes tell me there is no building, or sign of building above the Dark Plain, I should say it was cast from thence. Some fairies, possibly, may be holding up a sheet there," she carelessly added, "playing at magic lantern in the moonlight." "Standing in the air," sarcastically returned Miss Godolphin. "Archimedes offered to move the world with his lever, if the world would only find him a place, apart from itself, to stand on." "Are you convinced, Janet?" asked George. "Of what?" He pointed over the Plain. "That there is nothing uncanny to be seen to-night. I'll send Margery here when I return." "I am convinced of one thing--that it is getting uncommonly damp," said practical Bessy. "I never stood under these ash-trees in an evening yet, let the atmosphere be ever so cold and clear, but a dampness might be felt. I wonder if it is the nature of ash-trees to exhale it? Maria, the Rector would not thank us for bringing you here." "Is Miss Hastings so susceptible to cold?" asked Charlotte Pain. "Not more so than other people are," was Maria's answer. "It is her child-like, delicate appearance, I suppose, that makes us fancy it," said Bessy Godolphin. "Come, let us depart. If Lady Godolphin could see us here, she would go crazy: she says, you know, that damp brings fever." They made a simultaneous movement. Their road lay to the right; Charlotte Pain's to the left. "I envy you four," she said, after wishing them good night. "You are a formidable body, numerous enough to do battle with any assailants you may meet in your way, fairies, or shadows, or fever, or what not. I must encounter them alone." "Scarcely," replied George Godolphin, as he drew her arm within his, and turned with her in the direction of Ashlydyat.