The trees seemed to sweep with a great luxuriance of shadow over a broad stretch of country. It must be possible to find some refuge there. There might be--a hermit, perhaps, in a little cell, who would give them nuts and some milk from his goat--or a charcoal burner, wild but kind, like those Lilias remembered to have seen in the forest with wild locks hanging over their eyes. If only no magician should be there to beguile them into his den, pretending to be kind! Thus Lilias mixed fact and fiction, her own broken remembrances of Italian woods sounding as fictitious among the English elms and beeches as the wildest visions of fancy. For this wood, though it had poetic corners in it, was traversed by the highroad, from end to end, and was as innocent of charcoal-burners as of magicians. And it turned out a great deal further off than they thought. They walked and walked, and still it lay before them, smiling in its yellow and red, waving and beckoning in the breeze, which was less chilly now that the sun was up. The sun reached to the footpath behind the hedge, and warmed the little wayfarers through and through--that was the best thing that had happened to them--for how good it is to be warmed when one is chilled and weary; and what a rising of hope and courage there is when the misty dawn disperses before the rising of the brave sun! Nello almost recovered his spirits when he got within the wood. There were side-aisles even to the highroad, and deep corners in its depths where shelter could be had, and the ground was all flaked with shadow and sunshine; and there were green glades, half visible at every side, with warm grass all lit by the sun. “Let us go and sit down, Lily. Oh, what a pretty place to sit down! Oh, Lily, I cannot--I cannot walk any more; I am so tired,” cried Nello. “I am tired too,” she said, with a quiver in her mouth, looking vainly round for some trace of the charcoal-burner or of the hermit. All was silent, sunny, fresh with the morning, but vacant as the fields. And Lilias could not be satisfied with mere rest, though she wanted it so much. “How are we to get home, if we dare not go to the railway? and there is no other way,” she said. “Oh, Nello, it will be very nice to rest--but how are we to get home?” “Oh, never mind; I am so tired,” said weary little Nello. “Look, Lily, what a warm place. It is quite dry, and a tree to lean against. Let us stay here.”