Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/65

 Barnard followed his example, for though he had a key which fitted the rusty padlock, it did not even occur to him to stop and get it.

The narrow path was made narrower still by the intrusion of bracken from either side, and was over hung by the branches of low-growing beech and ash trees. A little distance from the road it divided, going to the right toward the cottage of the head keeper, and mounting the hill straight ahead, with few windings toward the Tower. The windless air seemed, to Barnard, to be pressed down by the trees, until it weighed heavy as a pall upon his head. He had looked forward to the refreshment of coming back into the country after the heat and dust of London; and he had come to this! His temples throbbed, and the green light in the silent woods gave no ease to his eyes, which saw red, as if they peeped through a net work of bloodshot veins. The crackling of tiny branches and last year's pine-cones under his feet only emphasized the stillness and made it terrible to him for the first time in his recollection. It was as if the woods whispered of the secret that he was on his way to find out, a secret of horror, which it seemed unnatural that such a fairy place should harbour.

Barnard did not consciously think these thoughts, yet they beat in his brain, and it was the hammering of them against his temples which made his head throb as if it might burst.