"But, Joel, she's old, and when she dies——"
"We'll all be rich folk, Lucy."
"And we can be married then, lad, and put Forest Hall in trim, and be happy."
He laughed, but not very spontaneously.
"There goes a rocket over the trees," he said.
"It goes up like my hope," replied Lucy.
But the thing burst and was gone.
"Prophetic, I fear," said Joel.
When they came under the black shadow of the crag on the top of which Forest Hall was built, they paused and glanced up.
The moonlight brought the battlements into relief against the sky, and shone silvery upon the fir-tree, growing out of a niche, and sweeping the front wall with its feathery boughs. The house was very high, strange and frowning, grander than it ever looked by daylight.