THE ENCHANTED FOREST. 361 



dark. The occasional shafts of sunlight or 

 glimpses of blue sky served merely to accentuate 

 the soft gloom. Save that we climbed always, 

 we could not tell where we were going. 



The ascent occupied a little over an hour. 

 Then through the tree trunks and undergrowth 

 we caught the sky-line of the crest. When we 

 topped this we took a breath, and prepared our- 

 selves for a corresponding descent. But in a 

 hundred yards we popped out of the forest to 

 find ourselves on a new level. The Fourth 

 Bench had been attained. 



It was a grass country of many low, rounded 

 hills and dipping valleys, with fine isolated 

 oaklike trees here and there in the depressions, 

 and compact, beautiful oaklike groves thrown 

 over the hills like blankets. Well-kept, green, 

 trim, intimate, it should have had church spires 

 and gray roofs in appropriate spots. It was a 

 refreshment to the eye after the great and austere 

 spaces among which we had been dwelling, repose 

 to the spirit after the alert and dangerous lands. 

 The dark-curtained forest seemed, fancifully, an 

 enchantment through which we had gamed to 

 this remote smiling land, nearest of all to the 

 blue sky. 



We continued south for two days ; and then, 



12a 



