"
"We can always go back through the wood," said Esther.
"Yes, if you don't mind going back the way you came."
"Come on," she snapped. She was not going to be laughed at by Mark, and
she dared him to deny that he was not as much aware as herself of an
eeriness in the atmosphere.
"Only because it seems dark in here after that dazzling sunlight on the
wold. Hark! I hear the sound of water."
They struggled through the undergrowth toward the sound; soon from a
steep wooded bank they were gazing down into a millpool, the surface of
which reflected with a gloomy deepening of their hue the colour but not
the form of the trees above. Water was flowing through a rotten sluice
gate down from the level of the stream upon a slimy water-wheel that
must have been out of action for many years.
"The dark tarn of Auber in the misty mid region of Weir!" Mark
exclaimed. "Don't you love _Ulalume_? I think it's about my favourite
poem."
"Never heard of it," Esther replied indifferently. He might have taken
advantage of this confession to give her a lecture on poetry, if the
millpool and the melancholy wood had not been so affecting as to make
the least attempt at literary exposition impertinent.
"And there's the chapel," Mark exclaimed, pointing to a ruined edifice
of stone, the walls of which were stained with the damp of years rising
from the pool.
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