the unmanly weakness, hardly knew what he was doing before he found
himself in the open air. From the hall clock came the first stroke
of twelve as he closed the door behind him. It was the hour at which
mother Rees had offered him a meeting with Dorothy; but it was
assuredly with no expectation of seeing her that he turned his steps
towards her dwelling.






CHAPTER VIII.

AN ADVENTURE.





When he reached the spot at which he usually turned off by a gap in
the hedge to NEEDLE his way through the unpathed wood, he yielded
to the impulses of memory and habit, and sought the yew-circle,
where for some moments he stood by the dumb, disfeatured stone,
which seemed to slumber in the moonlight, a monument slowly
vanishing from above a vanished grave. Indeed it might well have
been the grave of buried Time, for what fitter monument could he
have than a mutilated sun-dial, what better enclosure than such a
hedge of yews, and more suitable light than that of the dying moon?
Or was it but that the heart of the youth, receiving these things as