Wolf’s mind now began analyzing in a more rational manner this difference between the hill he stood upon and the landscape stretched out before him. “It must be,” he thought, “that this mass of earth is a far older portion of the planet’s surface than the plain beneath it. Even if its magnetism is purely chemical and free from anything that reverts to the old religions, it may very well exercise a definite effect upon human nerves! The plain must, within measurable years, have been covered by the sea. Where those elm-trees now grow there must have been shells and sand and swaying seaweeds and great sea-sponges and voyaging shoals of fish. And this recent emerging from the ocean cannot but have given a certain chastened quality, like the quality of old medieval pictures, to these ‘chessboard fields.’ ”

He stared, frowning intently, at the curves and hollows of Poll’s Camp.