“Many a time your brother and I fished for hours together from that bank there, just where the bramble grows.  That bramble has not grown an inch ever since, not a leaf altered; we used to pick blackberries off it, with our rods stuck in the bank—­it was later in the year than now—­till we stript it quite bare after a day or two.  The steward used to come over—­they were marking timber for cutting and we used to stay here while they rambled through the wood, with an axe marking the trees that were to come down.  I wonder whether the big old boat is still anywhere.  I suppose she was broken up, or left to rot; I have not seen her since we came home.  It was in the wood that lies at the right—­the other wood is called the forest; they say in old times it was eight miles long, northward up the shore of the lake, and full of deer; with a forester, and a reeve, and a verderer, and all that.  Your brother was older than you; he went to India, or the Colonies; is he living still?”

“I care not.”

“That’s good-natured, at all events; but do you know?”

“Not I; and what matter?  If he’s living, I warrant he has his share of the curse, the sweat of his brow and his bitter crust; and if he is dead, he’s dust or worse, he’s rotten, and smells accordingly.”

Sir Bale looked at him; for this was the brother over whom, only a year or two ago, Philip used to cry tears of pathetic longing.  Feltram looked darkly in his face, and sneered with a cold laugh.

“I suppose you mean to jest?” said Sir Bale.

“Not I; it is the truth.  It is what you’d say, if you were honest.  If he’s alive, let him keep where he is; and if he’s dead, I’ll have none of him, body or soul.  Do you hear that sound?”

“Like the wind moaning in the forest?”

“Yes.”

“But I feel no wind.  There’s hardly a leaf stirring.”

“I think so,” said Feltram.  “Come along.”

And he began striding up the gentle slope of the glen, with many a rock peeping through its sward, and tufted ferns and furze, giving a wild and neglected character to the scene; the background of which, where the glen loses itself in a distant turn, is formed by its craggy and wooded side.

Up they marched, side by side, in silence, towards that irregular clump of trees, to which Feltram had pointed from the Mardykes side.

As they approached, it showed more scattered, and two or three of the trees were of grander dimensions than in the distance they had appeared; and as they walked, the broad valley of Cloostedd Forest opened grandly on their left, studding the sides of the valley with solitary trees or groups, which thickened as it descended to the broad level, in parts nearly three miles wide, on which stands the noble forest of Cloostedd, now majestically reposing in the stirless air, gilded and flushed with the melancholy tints of autumn.

I am now going to relate wonderful things; but they rest on the report, strangely consistent, it is true, of Sir Bale Mardykes.  That all his senses, however, were sick and feverish, and his brain not quite to be relied on at that moment, is a fact of which sceptics have a right to make all they please and can.