All gave something. It was impossible to
sit among their branches without absorbing some of the subtle and
exhilarating tree-life. He soon learned how to gather it all into
himself, and turn it to account in his own being.

"Sit quietly," the governess said. "Let the forces creep in and stir
about. Do nothing yourself. Give them time to become part of yourself
and mix properly with your own currents. Effort on your part prevents
this, and you weaken them without gaining anything yourself."

Jimbo made all sorts of experiments with trees and rocks and water and
fields, learning gradually the different qualities of force they gave
forth, and how to use them for himself. Nothing, he found, was really
dead. And sometimes he got himself into strange difficulties in the
beginning of his attempts to master and absorb these nature-forces.

"Remember," the governess warned him more than once, when he was
inclined to play tricks, "they are in quite a different world to ours.
You cannot take liberties with them. Even a sympathetic soul like
yourself only touches the fringe of their world. You exchange
surface-messages with them, nothing more. Some trees have terrible
forces just below the surface. They could extinguish you
altogether--absorb you into themselves. Others are naturally hostile.
Some are mere tricksters. Others are shifty and treacherous, like the
hollies, that move about too much. The oak and the pine and the elm are
friendly, and you can always trust them absolutely. But there are
others----!"

She held up a warning finger, and Jimbo's eyes nearly dropped out of his
head.

"No," she added, in reply to his questions, "you can't learn all this at
once. Perhaps----" She hesitated a little. "Perhaps, if you don't
escape, we should have time for all manner of adventures among the trees
and other things--but then, we _are_ going to escape, so there's no good
wasting time over _that_!"

CHAPTER XIV

AN ADVENTURE

But Miss Lake did not always accompany him on these excursions into the
night; sometimes he took long flights by himself, and she rather
encouraged him in this, saying it would give him confidence in case he
ever lost her and was obliged to find his way about alone.

"But I couldn't get really lost," he said once to her. "I know the winds
perfectly now and the country round for miles, and I never go out in
fog----"

"But these are only practice flights," she replied. "The flight of
escape is