'You'll have to climb it.' The
broad fields on the other side were as dark as water and as still. It
was surprising, when she jumped down, to find she did not sink, to
find that she and Charles could walk steadily on this blackness, cut
here and there by the deeper blackness of a hedge. There were no cows,
but sheep stumbled up and bleated at their approach, and for some time
the tinkling of the bell-wether's bell accompanied them like music.
'There's a stile here,' Charles said, and from this they plunged into
another wood where birds fluttered and twittered and, in the
undergrowth, there were small stealthy sounds.
'I wouldn't come here alone,' Henrietta said, 'for all the world.'
Charles said nothing. Mrs. Batty was right: it was like walking with a
dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed
field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to
a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of
larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply rutted and they walked
in single file until Charles turned, saying, 'This is what I've
brought you to see. This is "The Monks' Pool."'
A large pond, almost round and strewn with dead leaves about its edge,
lay sombrely on their right hand, without a movement, without a gleam.
It was like a pall covering something secret, something which must
never be revealed, and opposite, where the ground rose steeply, tall
firs stood up, guardians of the unknown.
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