54 SYLVAN SECRETS. 



compass. It was answered by another, far 

 away, ringing vaguely and faintly, like an 

 echo lost in the interminable jungle. 



As the moonlight grew I made my way 

 from place to place, noting the wonderful 

 changes that came over the landscape with 

 each turn. The trees seemed to grow taller 

 and taller, the shadows blacker and blacker 

 in contrast with the slanting streams of pale, 

 yellowish light falling through the rifts. 

 The tangles of vines and the dense masses of 

 bay and haw trees often forced me to make 

 wide detours. I crawled over great heaps of 

 fallen logs, branches, and tree tops, and 

 through nets of green-briar, till at length I 

 ' came to the shore of a lakelet, which instantly 

 brought into my mind Poe's 



Dark turn of Auber 

 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 



It was a still, dark, sullen sheet of v/ater 

 framed in a fantastically grotesque border of 

 jungle, upon which the moonlight was falling 

 with ghostly effect. 



I was tired, almost overcome, indeed, with 

 the exertion of my ramble, and was glad to 

 perch myself on a huge cypress knee with 

 my heavy rubber boots dangling and drip- 

 ping. I had come to study the swamp, and 

 nothing was to prevent me. Mopping my 

 face and panting, I looked out over the only 

 scene I ever saw that would wholly excuse 

 the adjective weird. Imagine slanting shreds 

 of pallid fog hanging like giant wisps of gos- 

 samer from the water, which was like ink, 

 to the tree-tops which were like charcoal 

 masses against a filmy sky, and then remem- 

 ber the awful solitude, the desolation, the 

 stillness, and that nameless hovering spirit 



