The scene was enough to terrify a far less timid child than Joy.
It was now quite dark.

Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible.

The huge trunks of the pines and maples towered up, up--they could scarcely see how far, grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust itself out against the sky, in that hideous likeness to a fleshless hand which night and darkness always lend to them.

Even Gypsy, though she had been in the woods many times at night before, shuddered as she stood looking up.

A queer thought came to her, of an old fable she had sometime read in Tom's mythology; a fable of some huge Titans, angry and fierce, who tried to climb into heaven; there was just that look about the trees.