The Hill of Dreams | Page 5

before. Ever since
that Saturday evening in January, the lonely valley had been a desirable
place to him; he had watched the green battlements in summer and
winter weather, had seen the heaped mounds rising dimly amidst the
drifting rain, had marked the violent height swim up from the ice-white
bulwarks glimmer and vanish in hovering April twilight. In the hedge
of the lane there was a gate on which he used to lean and look down
south to where the hill surged up so suddenly, its summit defined on
summer evenings not only by the rounded ramparts but by the ring of
dense green foliage that marked the circle of oak trees. Higher up the
lane, on the way he had come that Saturday afternoon, one could see
the white walls of Morgan's farm on the hillside to the north, and on the
south there was the stile with the view of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage
smoke; but down in the hollow, looking over the gate, there was no hint
of human work, except those green and antique battlements, on which
the oaks stood in circle, guarding the inner wood.

The ring of the fort drew him with stronger fascination during that hot
August weather. Standing, or as his headmaster would have said,
"mooning" by the gate, and looking into that enclosed and secret valley,
it seemed to his fancy as if there were a halo about the hill, an aureole
that played like flame around it. One afternoon as he gazed from his
station by the gate the sheer sides and the swelling bulwarks were more
than ever things of enchantment; the green oak ring stood out against
the sky as still and bright as in a picture, and Lucian, in spite of his
respect for the law of trespass, slid over the gate. The farmers and their
men were busy on the uplands with the harvest, and the adventure was
irresistible. At first he stole along by the brook in the shadow of the
alders, where the grass and the flowers of wet meadows grew richly;
but as he drew nearer to the fort, and its height now rose sheer above
him, he left all shelter, and began desperately to mount. There was not
a breath of wind; the sunlight shone down on the bare hillside; the loud
chirp of the grasshoppers was the only sound. It was a steep ascent and
grew steeper as the valley sank away. He turned for a moment, and
looked down towards the stream which now seemed to wind remote
between the alders; above the valley there were small dark figures
moving in the cornfield, and now and again there came the faint echo
of a high-pitched voice singing through the air as on a wire. He was wet
with heat; the sweat streamed off his face, and he could feel it trickling
all over his body. But above him the green bastions rose defiant, and
the dark ring of oaks promised coolness. He pressed on, and higher, and
at last began to crawl up the vallum, on hands and knees, grasping the
turf and here and there the roots that had burst through the red earth.
And then he lay, panting with deep breaths, on the summit.
Within the fort it was all dusky and cool and hollow; it was as if one
stood at the bottom of a great cup. Within, the wall seemed higher than
without, and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There
were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different
from the common nettles in the lanes, and Lucian, letting his hand
touch a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch
there was an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old,
crooked and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms;
beech and oak and hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and

deformed that each seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He
began to fight his way through the ugly growth, stumbling and getting
hard knocks from the rebound of twisted boughs. His foot struck once
or twice against something harder than wood, and looking down he saw
stones white with the leprosy of age, but still showing the work of the
axe. And farther, the roots of the stunted trees gripped the foot-high
relics of a wall; and a round heap of fallen stones nourished rank,
unknown herbs, that smelt poisonous. The earth was black and
unctuous, and bubbling under the feet, left no track behind. From it, in
the darkest places where the shadow was thickest, swelled the growth
of an abominable fungus, making the still air sick with its corrupt odor,
and he