‘Come, then, while I show you.’ He put an arm unresisted, about her, and they turned to the dark essay. ‘’Tis by here, the way,’ he whispered—‘the only one for secrecy. But I doubt you will dare it when you see.’
She leaned close to him, not answering. For all her professed assurance, the influence of the place was beginning to tell upon her a little. As they pushed deeper into the thicket, the light saddened and grew obscure, and an intense silence gathered about them; the snaky branches seemed to writhe, involving their path in noiseless folds, and a smell of poisonous water came to their nostrils.
‘It is a horrible place,’ whispered the girl suddenly; and she stopped.
‘You are frightened, Joan. We will go back.’
‘No. Give me one moment. Look, is that the moat, and the body of a great serpent stretching across it?’
‘It is the moat; but the serpent is only a limb of that big tree before us, sleek and mottled like a green worm. It bridges the ditch and rests upon the wall beyond; and it is over that we must go, if go we must.’
‘How did you discover it, Brion—this way, I mean?’
‘Why, I came to look. I had promised you I would contrive a plan; and here was my contrivance, all ready provided for us. I take no credit for it.’
‘Nay, but you shall have it, since it was credit enough to seek into these glooms you feared. And you dared it just for my idle word, Brion?’
‘I should be no true knight, Joan, if I refused to descend into the very pit for my lady’s sake.’