Over it hung the "thought and deadly feel of solitude." The only break for miles in the primeval forest was that made for the narrow road.

House or cabin there was none in all the gloomy reaches of rocks and gnarled trees.

It was too inhospitable a region to tempt even the wildest squatter.
The flood of moonlight made the desolation more oppresive than ever, by making palpable and suggestive the inky abysses under the trees and in the thickets.
Fortner looked up the road to his right and listened intently.
A waterfall mumbled somewhere in the neighborhood.

The pines and hemlocks near the summit sighed drearily.

A gray fox, which had probably just supped off a pheasant, sat on a log and barked out his gluttonous satisfaction.