It took the girls a week to find the druids’ circle that their cousin had spoken of. They discovered it after supper one evening, quite close behind the Lodge. The forest path they were following beganclimbing a steep slope. As they looked upward, they saw an evenly planted row of ancient oaks set in thick green turf. In the gaps between they could see a further row of trees, but so massive were the specimens in this double ring that they could not see past the two rows together. The enormous trunks, wider than the girls could span with their arms, formed a perfect barrier, protecting whatever lay beyond from careless eyes.

Hand in hand, the girls approached this awesome barricade and slipped between the giant sentinels. The tops of these hoary trees, so close together for so many ages, had grown into one dense, continuous ring. No sunlight pierced it to fall on the intruders beneath, and yet the green turf continued underfoot, right up to the great trunks.

Inside the ring, the broad crown of the hill was almost flat. They could not see beyond the trees either to the distant hills or to the woods outside. They were in a huge room walled by living plants. Above them, past the tangled branches of the oaks, stretched a perfect circle of darkening twilight sky about seventy feet across. The lush turf formed a dense, soft carpet underneath, and small white field lilies sprang above it on long, thin stalks, like tiny stars scattered across a dark green sky.

Speechless, Kate and Emily stood and looked around. This was a silent place. No birds sang in the branches of the great trees, and Emily found no bugs crawling in the grass beneath. Slowly they wandered to the very middle of the twilit circle and dropped down onto the inviting turf.