with innumerable branchlets, or were centred on some solitary
distorted limb which the woodman's axe had spared.  The trees thus
assumed all manner of crooked, deformed, fantastic shapes--all
betokening age, and all decay--all, in despite of the noiseless
solitude around, proclaiming the waste and ravages of man. 

The time was that of the first watches of night, when the autumnal
moon was brightest and broadest.  You might see, on the opposite side
of the pool, the antlers of the deer every now and then, moving
restlessly above the fern in which they had made their couch; and,
through the nearer glades, the hares and conies stealing forth to
sport or to feed; or the bat wheeling low, in chase of the forest
moth.  From the thickest part of the copse came a slow human foot, and
Hilda, emerging, paused by the waters of the pool.  That serene and
stony calm habitual to her features was gone; sorrow and passion had
seized the soul of the Vala, in the midst of its fancied security from
the troubles it presumed to foresee for others.  The lines of the face
were deep and care-worn--age had come on with rapid strides--and the
light of the eye was vague and unsettled, as if the lofty reason
shook, terrified in its pride, at last.