Yes, he certainly knew the glade, with the fine beech trees surrounding
it: where could he have seen it before? All at once he remembered his
dream in the ruined temple, and started to discover the secret
foreknowledge he had thus possessed.
He wandered up and down the glade till it became dusk, and then shook
off the thoughts to which he had been a prey, and started to return to
the inn, when, to his dismay, he found he had forgotten in which
direction it lay.
While seeking to find the path by which he had entered the glade, he
suddenly noticed a beaten track between two huge rocks, which seemed to
point in the direction he had come, and yet which he recognised as the
path he had been bidden to follow in his dream. He hesitated not, but
committed himself to it, while darkness seemed to increase each moment.
He was beginning to fear the dangers of a night in the woods, when he
was startled by a sound as of many low voices, and at the same moment
became conscious that a light was tinging with red the upper branches of
the trees at no little distance, as if proceeding from some fire, hidden
by the formation of the ground.
At first he thought that he was in the neighbourhood of outlaws, and
tried to retire, but, as in his dream, he felt so strong an impulse to
discover the party whom the woods concealed that he persevered.
Suddenly he stopped short, for he had come to the edge of a kind of
natural amphitheatre, a deep hollow in the earth, the sides of which
were covered with bushes and trees, while the area at the bottom might
perhaps have covered a hundred square yards, and was clothed with
verdant turf.
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