Out upon the open road again they saw to the left, back among trees upon a low hilltop, a large and well-built house. “Carthew House,” said Carthew, “where I live. But I think that I will ride on with you to the Oak Grange.”
Presently, leaving the highway, they took a rough and narrow road that led, first through fields and then through uncultivated country, toward the great wood that had been for some time visible. “Hawthorn Forest,” said Carthew. They rode a mile in silence, the wood growing darker and taller until it reared itself immediately before them. To the right, at some little distance from the road and almost upon the edge of the forest, stood a thatch-roofed cottage with a dooryard where, later, flowers would bloom, and under the eaves a row of beehives. “Heron’s cottage,” said Carthew. “Old Heron lives there, who in the old times was clerk to the steward of the castle.”
They entered the wood. It was dark and old, parts of it not having been cut since Saxon times. Their road, which was now hardly more than a cart track, crossed but an angle, the Oak Grange lying beyond in open country. But for some minutes they were sunk in a wilderness of old trees, with a spongy, leaf-thickened earth beneath the horses’ hoofs. The sunshine fell shattered through an interlacing of boughs just beginning to take on a hue of spring. Every vista closed in a vaporous blue.
A woman was gathering faggots in the wood. As they came nearer she straightened herself and stood, watching them. She was young and tall, grey-eyed, and with braided hair the colour of ripe wheat. “Heron’s daughter,” said Carthew when they had passed. “She should cover her hair like other women with a cap. It is not seemly to wear it so, in braids that shine.”
They were presently forth from the forest; before them a stretch of fields no longer well husbanded, a stream murmuring among stones, a bit of orchard, and an old, dilapidated dwelling, better than a farm house, less than a manor house, all crusted with lichen and bunched with ivy. A little removed stood the huge old granary that had given the place its name, but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. “The Oak Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that once it was a great haunt of elves and fairies, and that they are yet seen of moonlight nights, dancing around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven years they pay a tithe of their company to hell.”
CHAPTER VI
THE MAN WITH THE HAWK
Aderhold saw no fairies, though sometimes of moonlight nights he pleased his fancy by bringing them in his mind’s eye in a ring around the oak. Hours—days—weeks passed, and still he abode at the Oak Grange.