"They all go away together,--Sir Thomas and Captain Argall, Captain West, Lieutenant George Percy and his cousin, my master, and Sir Thomas's men; they go out of the wood as though it were accursed, though indeed it was not half so gloomy then as it is now.

The sun shone into it then, sometimes, and the birds sang.

You would n't think it from the looks of things now, would you?
As the dead man rotted in his grave, and the living man died by inches above him, they say the wood grew darker, and darker, and darker.

How dark it's getting now, and cold,--cold as the dead!" His auditors drew closer together, and shivered.

Sparrow and I were so near that we could see the hands of the ingenious story-teller, bound behind his back, working as he talked.