nt was at fault,
I myself, if I had not been aware of the trick, should have said that
the ugly rough thing which she was trundling along, like a bowl or a
cricket-ball, was an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensation
and of will. At last my poor pet, thoroughly perplexed and tired out,
fairly relinquished the contest, and came slowly away, turning back once
or twice to look at the object of her curiosity, as if half inclined
to return and try the event of another shove. The sudden flight of a
wood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention; and Ellen amused herself
by fancying how the hedgehog was scuttling away, till our notice was
also attracted by a very different object.

We had nearly threaded the wood, and were approaching an open grove
of magnificent oaks on the other side, when sounds other than of
nightingales burst on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of the
woodman's axe, and emerging from the Pinge we discovered the havoc which
that axe had committed. Above twenty of the finest trees lay stretched
on the velvet turf. There they lay in every shape and form of
devastation: some, bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage,
with the bark built up in long piles at the side; some with the spoilers
busy about them, stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their noble
branches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they were
alive--majestic corses, the slain of to-day! The grove was like a field
of battle. The young lads who were stripping the bark, the very children
who were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as if conscious
that death was around them. The nightingales sang faintly and
interruptedly--a few low frightened notes like a requiem.

Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, the very tree that they
are felling; they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughtering
axes, and are about to saw it asunder. After all, it is a fine and
thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand an
attitude was that young man thrown as he gave the final strokes round
the root; and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently
powerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet overmastering that giant
of the woods, conquering and overthrowing that thing of life! Now it has
passed half through the trunk, and the woodman has begun to calculate
which way the tree will fall; he drives a wedge to direct its
course;--now a few more movements of the no