And suddenly he seized me violently by the hand. Then I found myself alone in the shadow of the wall which had once borne a fresco by Nollikins, and I stood like a man awakened from a dream. In the flattering moonlight, the sham survivals of the other century might have been thousands of years old, their suburban setting some sylvan corner of the Roman campagna.... Then once more I heard the nightingale, and it sang me back into contemporary realities. I wondered if it had been singing all the time. I had not heard less of it during the hour that Uvo and I had spent underneath this very wood, four summers ago!
That was on the first night of our life at Witching Hill, and this was to be our last. I arranged it beautifully when I got in and had tried to explain how entirely I had lost my bearings in the wood. I told Uvo, and it happened to be true, that I had been wondering why on earth he would not come up north with me next day. And before midnight he had packed.
Then we sat up together for the last time in that back room of his on the first floor, and watched the moon set in the tree-tops, and silver leaves twinkle as the wood sighed in its sleep. One more pipe, and the black sky was turning grey. A few more pipes, much talk about old times, and the wood was a wood once more; its tossing crests were tipped with emeralds in the flashing sun; and as tree after tree broke into a merry din, we spoke of joy-bells taken up by steeple after steeple, and Uvo read me eight lines that he had discovered somewhere while I was away.
"Some cry up Gunnersbury,
For Sion some declare,
And some say that with Chiswick House
No villa can compare;
"But ask the beaux of Middlesex,
Who know the country well,
If Witching Hill—if Witching Hill—
Don't bear away the bell."
"I hope you agree, Beau Gillon?" said Uvo, with the old wilful smile. "By the way, I haven't mentioned him since you've been back, but on a last morning like this you may be glad to hear that my old ghost of the soil is laid at last.... The rest is silence, if you don't mind, old man."