I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness of
natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round in
search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem,
columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening anywhere.
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I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently
I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light,
distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying
walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a
space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle.
There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling
a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house
presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and
narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole
looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate
spot." It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on
the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.
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