If it had not been for this secret refuge and for the sensations accumulated in these walks, Wolf’s first winter in Dorset would have culminated in a miserable inertia, resembling that of the luckless Redfern. For one thing, Gerda seemed completely to have lost her miraculous power of bird-whistling. He caught her making the attempt; but recently, as far as he could tell, she had given the thing up. He suspected, too, that Darnley and Mattie were unhappy; but, ever since that day at the School-Treat, both those reserved beings had remained completely uncommunicative as to their relations with each other, though on all other topics he found them as affectionate and spontaneous as ever.