and hotter; the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the
tingling fire seemed to spread all over his body.

Suddenly, he knew that he was alone. Not merely solitary; that he had
often been amongst the woods and deep in the lanes; but now it was a
wholly different and a very strange sensation. He thought of the valley
winding far below him, all its fields by the brook green and peaceful and
still, without path or track. Then he had climbed the abrupt surge of the
hill, and passing the green and swelling battlements, the ring of oaks,
and the matted thicket, had come to the central space. And behind there
were, he knew, many desolate fields, wild as common, untrodden,
unvisited. He was utterly alone. He still grew hotter as he sat on the
stump, and at last lay down at full length on the soft grass, and more at
his ease felt the waves of heat pass over his body.

And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined,
delicious things, indulging a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air
seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled
and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the
great mounds, within the ring of oaks, deep in the heart of the matted
thicket. Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with
the laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly misshapen
trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, not one was free,
but all were interlaced and grew one about another; and just above
ground, where the cankered stems joined the protuberant roots, there were
forms that imitated the human shape, and faces and twining limbs that
amazed him. Green mosses were hair, and tresses were stark in grey
lichen; a twisted root swelled into a limb; in the hollows of the rotted
bark he saw the masks of men. His eyes were fixed and fascinated by the
simulacra of the wood, and could not see his hands, and so at last, and