The King Behind the King by Warwick Deeping

Fulk sat in the doorway of the hermit's cell and watched the dusk come down-the slow, subtle dusk of a still May evening. The beech wood had been full of the singing of birds, and on the top of a holly near the quarry's mouth a thrush had poured out all its joy and desire, its grey-brown breast turned towards the sunset. The beech foliage had changed from vivid green to amethyst, the trunks from grey to black, while orange, amber, and saffron were flung abroad across an exultant west. Now, later still, the woods rose in soft, rounded blackness against a deep blue sky, with the crescent of the moon clear as polished steel.

Fulk sat there brooding, his face growing grey in the dusk. The smoke of a fire rose beyond the mouth of the quarry-a grey, sinuous pillar that swayed slightly from side to side or thrust out a ghostly arm when some breath of wind played upon it. Now and again a voice growled sulkily, but since the birds had ceased their singing the silence had become immense, irrefutable, supreme.