Vistas of silence opened everywhere, into the heart and innermost
recesses of the wood; beginning with the likeness of an aisle, a
cloister, or a ruin open to the sky; then tangling off into a deep green
rustling mystery, through which gnarled trunks, and twisted boughs, and
ivy-covered stems, and trembling leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of old
trees stretched out at length, were faintly seen in beautiful confusion.
As the sunlight died away, and evening fell upon the wood, he entered
it. Moving, here and there a bramble or a drooping bough which stretched
across his path, he slowly disappeared. At intervals a narrow opening
showed him passing on, or the sharp cracking of some tender branch
denoted where he went; then, he was seen or heard no more.
Never more beheld by mortal eye or heard by mortal ear; one man
excepted. That man, parting the leaves and branches on the other side,
near where the path emerged again, came leaping out soon afterwards.
What had he left within the wood, that he sprang out of it as if it were
a hell!
The body of a murdered man. In one thick solitary spot, it lay among
the last year's leaves of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlong
down.
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