'Down here.' Fanny hesitated because she wasn't quite sure what she meant. 'It has such a strange feeling.' She looked at the others, who didn't seem very interested, then turned to the Forest man. 'Do you feel it?' she asked, hearing as she did so, to her great irritation, Louisa giggle behind her.

Because he had just been feeling the same thing and because he liked her, for the first time in his life Puckle tried to put a complex idea into words. 'It's the trees,' he said, with a nod towards the hull. He paused for a moment, wondering how to put it. 'When we go, Miss, there isn't much left, really. Not after a year or two in the ground, anyway.'

'There is your immortal soul, man,' Gilpin interrupted his reverie to remark firmly. 'Pray do not forget that.'

'I won't, Vicar,' Puckle concurred politely, if not, perhaps, with great conviction. 'Only trees,' he said to Fanny, 'not having souls they say, when they're cut down, they get another life' and he waved all around him now. 'Sometimes, down here,' he added, with simple feeling for the mystery of the thing, 'I feel as if I was inside a tree.' He smiled at her, eager, yet a little embarrassed. 'Funny, really. Stupid, I expect; but a man like me doesn't know much.'

'I don't think it's foolish at all,' said Fanny warmly. But she got no further, for Mr Gilpin indicated with a cough that he and Mr Adams had had enough and a few moments later she found herself out in the bright sunlight again.

Louisa had started to laugh. 'I do declare,' she cried, 'that strange fellow looked exactly like a tree himself. Did you not think so, Mr Martell?'

'Perhaps,' he agreed with a smile.

'Yet I liked what he said.' Fanny turned to the landowner hopefully.

'I agree, Miss Albion,' he replied. 'His theology may be deficient, but these peasants have a kind of wisdom, in their way.'

'It is hard to believe,' Louisa maintained, 'that such a creature is a man at all. I believe he is a troll or goblin of some kind. I'm sure he lives under the ground.'

'As a Christian, I may not agree,' Martell laughed. 'Although I know what you mean, my dear Miss Totton.'

It was time to depart now. The Tottons with Mr Martell would take the lane that led across by Sowley to Lymington; Mr Gilpin wished to take another track that would bring them across the heath towards the ford above Albion House.

Before they parted, however, Mr Martell came to Fanny's side. 'My stay here will shortly end, Miss Albion,' he said quietly, 'but I fully expect to return. I hope when I do I shall find you here and that I may call upon you.'