It was washed with the faintest of light, for the moon, far below, was yet climbing towards the horizon.

A star or two sparkled where the clouds broke, but so little light was there, that, until he had passed the moorland on the hill, he could not get the horror of moss-holes, and deep springs covered with treacherous green, out of his head.

But he never thought of turning.

When the fears of the way at length fell back and allowed his own thoughts to rise, the sense of a presence, or of something that might grow to a presence, was the first to awake in him.
The stillness seemed to be thinking all around his head.

But the way grew so dark, where it lay through a corner of the pine-wood, that he had to feel the edge of the road with his foot to make sure that he was keeping upon it, and the sense of the silence vanished.