I never saw anyone make a birch cup so since my little brother used to make them long ago -- before he died . '' `` I learned how to make them when I was a boy , camping out one summer . An old hunter taught me , '' said Mr. Meredith . `` Let me carry your books , Miss West . '' Rosemary was startled into another fib and said oh , they were not heavy . But the minister took them from her with quite a masterful air and they walked away together . It was the first time Rosemary had stood by the valley spring without thinking of Martin Crawford . The mystic tryst had been broken . The little by-path wound around the marsh and then struck up the long wooded hill on the top of which Rosemary lived . Beyond , through the trees , they could see the moonlight shining across the level summer fields . But the little path was shadowy and narrow . Trees crowded over it , and trees are never quite as friendly to human beings after nightfall as they are in daylight . They wrap themselves away from us . They whisper and plot furtively . If they reach out a hand to us it has a hostile , tentative touch . People walking amid trees after night always draw closer together instinctively and involuntarily , making an alliance , physical and mental , against certain alien powers around them . Rosemary 's dress brushed against John Meredith as they walked . Not even an absent-minded minister , who was after all a young man still , though he firmly believed he had outlived romance , could be insensible to the charm of the night and the path and the companion . It is never quite safe to think we have done with life . When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter .
These two people each thought their hearts belonged irrevocably XXXXX the past ; but they both found their walk up that hill very pleasant .
across by from of on over though through to with