"Trouble!" said Chartley; and he laughed. "I know not what you feel, dear lady; but I cannot, for my life, think all this night's adventure so very disastrous. I grieve, of course, that you should be alarmed or pained in any way; but yet a few hours of such sweet society, the power of protecting, assisting, supporting you, the linking of feelings, and sympathies, and associations with yours, even for so short a space, has something very pleasant in it. Whatever may be our fate hereafter, Lady Iola, we shall both remember this night, as one of those high points of time, which raise their heads out of the ocean of the past, and glitter afar in the light of memory." "I must tell him about myself and my fate," thought Iola; but Chartley pursued the subject no farther; and turning back upon their steps, they renewed their ascent towards the castle, winding along amongst the trees, which were there farther apart and less encumbered by underwood. How rapidly the wild encroaches upon the cultivated, when the hand of man is once withdrawn. In former years--not very long before, certainly not a century--the detached elevation in the wood, on which the castle stood, had been covered with smooth clean-shaven green turf, without tree or shrub, which could cover an approaching enemy from the shafts of the garrison. It had its road winding round it from the principal gate, and passing, till it approached the edge of the neighbouring forest, within bow shot of some loop-hole or battlement, at every turn. Now the trees had grown over the whole mount, as thick and close as anywhere in the wood--over road and all; and nothing but a pathway remained, where bands of retainers had formerly ridden up and down on horseback. The self-sown oaks, indeed, were small and thin; but there were some enormous ash trees, and large fine elms and beeches, which no one would have supposed of so late a growth. A great number of birches--"the ladies of the wood,"--mingled their slight silvery stems with the sturdier and more lordly forest trees, and the winged seeds of the ash, wafted to the walls, had planted themselves here and there, wherever a fallen stone had left a vacant space in the mortar, and had shot up into feathery shrubs, fringing the ancient battlements and cresting the tall tower. Thus, in the early summer time, when leaves are green, the castle at a distance could hardly be distinguished from the forest.