Suddenly, with the birth of an idea, a thrill went through him, and he started walking. He went past the stables, past the byres, past the columbarium, and so into the wild ground beyond, where he kept along the wall for a distance of fifty yards or so until he came to a dense clump of ilexes, and there stopped, his heart going a little excitedly. He had often noted and passed by this place, but had never before, for some unexplainable reason, been moved to push into it. The trees had built themselves up in a gloomy thicket high above the wall and over it, and, bridging the moat, were continued in a twin clump on the farther side. They were so grown down to the ground, so grappled to it by the long grasses which had woven themselves into the bases of the mass, as to appear impenetrable. Only a wrinkle, or suture, in the hill of sombre green seemed to betray to the sharp eyes of the boy the existence of some former passage between the foliage, now long closed in and hidden. Brion stood and hesitated. Somehow the place awed him--its gloom, its silence, its distance from the house. There was a brooding stillness about it which seemed to breathe of death and mystery. Then, characteristically enough, he seized his determination in hand, and made the plunge. He was of those whose instinct is always rather to challenge a terror than by flying to call it after them. Now, he had no sooner parted the boughs than he saw his suspicion confirmed. Very faint, very blurred, yet still distinguishable, the mark of a half-obliterated path ran under the trees. With just one sigh, a little shaken, he entered and let the green covert close behind him. And then he felt a shock of relief. It was not near so dark within the great thicket as its exterior would have led him to suppose. A thousand threads of gray light, rained down from overhead like the jets in a shower-bath, made melancholy visible there. He went forward a few steps, turned the trunk of a tree, and saw a low building before him. It was just a stone belvedere, moss grown, green with age and neglect, but still whole and unbroken. Its area might have measured four yards square; it stood some ten feet from the ground to the spring of the roof, which was low-peaked and tiled with plates of rough-hewn stone. Its front was open for two thirds of its width, and through the aperture Brion caught sight of the low parapet of a well projecting from the floor. Tingling all through, he stole forward and looked in.