Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/656

650 devour them pickled. But they will not be quite as well off this year as they usually are: this is all nothing to the number I have sometimes seen in damp autumns, – they become a positive nuisance then; you can scarcely step free of them."

Up here, in the depth of the forest, the store of maigre dishes ran no danger of being disturbed. Here the fungi would live their brief time of magnificence, and then drop back silently into the eternal decay of nature, without having been either strung upon cords or preserved in vinegar for the fast-time.

"Don't you eat toadstools in Bohemia?" inquired Kurt.

"Of course we eat toadstools in Bohemia," said the Bohemian, with a pitying smile; "but we don't eat the blue and the red ones – we only eat the yellow ones and the white ones."

Mr Howard here begged to explain that he utterly condemned not only blue and red, but also yellow and white toadstools; and that no power on earth could succeed in making him touch anything but an orthodox mushroom, with no suspicion of a doubt upon its character, and cooked in an orthodox English fashion.

Gretchen took no part in the discussion: she was wondering within her mind whether happiness were indeed compatible with a hut and smoked toadstools.

They had been walking for some hours now, and, contrary to her wont, she was tired. The scene with Tryphosa had excited her; her sleep had been broken and feverish: not even the autumn brilliancy around her could dispel the listless langour which weighed on her to-day. Ever since the moment of departure she had instinctively kept to her brother's side, and had until now succeeded in avoiding anything but the most general and trivial conversation. She was so absorbed in her own anxieties, that it was some time before she noticed the remarkable change which had come over Tolnay's manner. He was excited and flushed – talked loud at moments, and then subsided into moody silence. He seldom addressed her, and made no attempt to draw her away from the others. But whenever she happened to turn, she found his eyes fixed upon her; and once,when Dr Komers was helping her over a tree-trunk, she had been startled by a glitter in István's eyes, and that same look of furious hatred which she had seen two days ago in the cave. Tolnay was not looking at her at the moment – he was looking at the lawyer; and instinctively Gretchen dropped the hand which Vincenz had stretched towards her, and scrambled over the tree-trunk unaided.

They rested at intervals, and walked on as they felt inclined. The whole day was spent in the forests thus, and it was sunset when they emerged from under the trees on to a free space of meadow.

"We have been here before," said Gretchen; "this is the meadow on which we rested the very first time I walked in the mountains."

"When I was your guide," said Tolnay beside her. "I was to have shown you Gaura Dracului that day; don't you remember?"

It was the same meadow, but dressed in a different garment. Brilliantly green it had been before, but here, too, autumn had been busy, and with cunning alchemy had changed the emerald into an amethyst. Crocus-heads stood closed together, so thickly sown that every step crushed half-a-dozen of the full-blown flowers.