It was the
night before Christmas. It was clear, and there was no wind, but the sky
was overcast with level clouds and the evening was very dark. He started
unfed since the first meal of the day; it was dark three hours before he
was up into the high wood. He met no one during all these miles, and his
body and his mind were lonely; he hoped to press on and be at his
father's door before two in the morning or perhaps at one. The night was
so still that he heard no noise in the high wood, not even the rustling
of a leaf or a twig crackling, and no animal ran in the undergrowth. The
moss of the ride was silent under his heavy tread, but now and then the
steel of his side-arm clicked against a metal button of the great cloak
he wore. This sharp sound made him so conscious of himself that he
seemed to fill that forest with his own presence and to be all that was,
there or elsewhere. He was in a mood of unreal and not holy things. The
mood, remaining, changed its aspect, and now he was so far from alone
that all the trunks around him and the glimmers of sky between bare
boughs held each a spirit of its own, and with the powerful imagination
of the unlearned he could have spoken and held communion with the trees;
but it would have an evil communion, for he felt this mood of his take
on a further phase as he went deeper and deeper still into these
forests.
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