"It was about here," he said, after a
time. "It was close by here. Prob'bly down there, where the foxgloves
and the blackberries have taken root. Anyhow, that's near enough. I've
come as near as I can;" and he sat down upon the ledge just above this
hollow, and looked about him, attentively, in all directions.
The wind had ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over
the strewn boulders. Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep
chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked masses
of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and
on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about
him the shadows filled every hollow, and the rocks were like shoals or
reefs above the surface of a stagnant sea.
The place was a wilderness, a solitude, the dead and barren landscape
of dreams--quite empty, unoccupied, a place that even ghosts would
shun. He sat thinking, and listening; and soon it occurred to him
that, though all seemed so dead and so silent, this place was really
full of life. He heard the faint buzz of belated bees questing in
tufts of heather or foxglove bells, a bat flitted over his head, some
small furred thing scuttled past his feet; and in the air there were
thousands of winged insects, whose tiny voices one could hear by
straining one's ears.
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