I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The
darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I
looked round in search of another road. There was none: all was
interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening
anywhere.

I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;
presently I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim
light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its
decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I
stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept
away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a
broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy
frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its
front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was
narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of
the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate spot." It was as
still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest
leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.

"Can there be life here?" I asked.

Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement--that
narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue
from the grange.

It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on
the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to
feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him--it
was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.