It was a wide view that presented itself to their eyes there on the highest point in the Venn, that is adorned with a rickety wooden tower. The whole large plateau covered with heather lay before them, with here and there a group of dark firs that only showed spreading branches on the side away from the storm. These firs that cowered so timidly were trees that had been planted there; they were hardly higher than the heather, and only recognisable on account of their different colour. And, here and there, there was a stray grey boulder and a cross that the wind had carried to the side of it. And a calm lay over the whole in the pale midday autumn light as though it were God's acre. When they had climbed up the tower they saw still more. From the plateau they looked down into the valley: a blue expanse around them, blue from the darkness of the forests and from autumn vapours, and in the beautiful blue outstretched villages the white houses half hidden behind tall hedges. And here, looking down on Belgium, with its grey fumes hanging like a cloud in the clear transparent autumn air, lay the large town of Verviers with its church-towers and factory chimneys towering above it. Kate heaved a sigh and shuddered involuntarily: oh, was the workaday world so near? Was grey life already approaching nearer and nearer to her wonderful fairy world? Her husband gave a slight cough; he found it very cold up there. They went down from the tower, but when he wanted to take her back to the inn she resisted: "No, not yet, not yet. That's only the midday bell." The bell was ringing in Fischbach Chapel, that ancient little church with its slated roof, in whose tower the great red lantern was formerly hoisted to point out the safe harbour to the wanderer swimming in the wild sea of mists, and the bell rung unceasingly to save the man who had lost his way through his ear should his eye fail him. The bell rang out clear and penetrating in the solitude, the only sound in the vast stillness. "How touching that sound is." Kate stood with folded hands and looked into the wide expanse, her eyes swimming in tears. What a charm there was in this Venn. It encircled the soul as the tough underwood of the heather and the creeping tendrils of the club moss entangled the foot. When she thought of how soon she would have to leave it, to go away from that immense stillness that seemed to be concealing a secret, to be cherishing something marvellous in its deep lap, her heart contracted in sudden fear. What would happen to her, what would become of her? Her seeking soul stood like a child on the threshold of fairyland asking for something--was there to be no gift for her? "What was that?" All at once she seized hold of her husband's arm with a low cry of terror. "Didn't you hear it as well?" She had grown quite pale; she stood there with dilated eyes, raising herself on her toes with an involuntary movement and craning her neck forward.