It was quite three weeks after the blood of the unhappy Joyce children had been mixed with the leaves and oozings of that mysterious wood,—when everything was falling back, in our country side, to the old order of simple occurrences,—that, upon a still and clear night, I went out of the cottage where I still lived, and, taking the two dogs with me, strolled down through the stable-yard, and past the garden, until I came to the brow of the hill that formed the apex of my friend’s grass-lands. The brow of the hill was flat all about me, commencing its declension some hundred and fifty feet eastwardly from where I stopped, and at the base running off into a meadow, the opposite side of which was overlooked by the Bussey wood; and, from where I stood, several pines rose out of the even surface of the forest, marking, as with an uplifted hand spread out, the place where the murder of the girl had been done. I have to be particular in my description seemingly to tediousness, but the singularity of what transpired leaves me no choice; for better, on such a matter, not to speak at all than not to speak explicitly. I resume. The grass was short on the brow of the hill, not over a few inches in length, improving in quality as the descent reached the valley. There was a tree near me; but that I left behind, putting it in my rear some ten paces, when I stopped. On my left was Motley’s wood,—so often mentioned,—drawing up with its intense shadows, close to the dividing wall. From the wall to where I stood all was clear and distinct, save where the shadows, or, more properly speaking, the shade fell over the ground, though in that shade there was a secondary light which artists and all thorough students of nature will recognize. The wall and the wood on my left ran down to that corner at the creek, which was only a short distance, about fifty feet, from the spot where the boy had fallen. Some two hundred and fifty yards away, and close to the corner just mentioned, was a clump of trees, and then straight before me, without an intervening object, the dark wood and the hand-like pines, that gloomed, in deeper gloom than night itself imparts, with all her shadows, over the gory rock of the girl’s death-bed. My purpose was simply to take the cooler air from the winnowing trees; for the room where I had been sitting with the family was oppressive with lamp-light and the encased atmosphere. I had become so accustomed to the dread localities, that habit had destroyed, with the first surprise and horror, all the keen sensations of a mysterious and indescribable neighborhoodism to the scene. Indeed, I had begun to look upon the whole affair as a story that had been told to me by some such person as the “Ancient Mariner.” Had it been otherwise, I never could have been induced to stay another moment in that house. I beg to assure everybody that when, at that hour of half-past eight o’clock, I left the parlor to stroll to the brow of the meadow hill, I did not have