He hates the tree as ivy would,
As the dragon of the ivy would,
That has us in his grips.”
They were ascending a sloping road, walled in on both sides by solemn woods, which somehow seemed as watchful as owls awake. Though daybreak was going over them with banners, scrolls of scarlet and gold, and with a wind like trumpets of triumph, the dark woods seemed to hold their secret like dark, cool cellars; nor was the strong sunlight seen in them, save in one or two brilliant shafts, that looked like splintered emeralds.
“I should not wonder,” said Dorian, “if the ivy does not find the tree knows a thing or two also.”
“The tree does,” assented the Captain. “The trouble was that until a little while ago the tree did not know that it knew.”
There was a silence; and as they went up the incline grew steeper and steeper, and the tall trees seemed more and more to be guarding something from sight, as with the grey shields of giants.
“Do you remember this road, Hump?” asked Dalroy of the innkeeper.
“Yes,” answered Humphrey Pump, and said no more; but few have ever heard such fulness in an affirmative.
They marched on in silence and about two hours afterward, toward eleven o’clock, Dalroy called a halt in the forest, and said that everybody had better have a few hours’ sleep. The impenetrable quality in the woods and the comparative softness of the carpet of beech-mast, made the spot as appropriate as the time was inappropriate. And if anyone thinks that common people, casually picked up in a street, could not follow a random leader on such a journey or sleep at his command in such a spot, given the state of the soul, then someone knows no history.