low could remember nothing like it, and he was
destined to carry this in his memory for a lifetime. The ghostly trees;
the silver-shining bark of the beeches, varying with a hundred
indescribable shades of green, and purple, and warmest umber; the
rugged gray of the grand old oaks; the lichens and mosses, the
mysterious wintry growths of toadstool and weed and berry; that awful
air of unearthliness which pervaded the thicker portions of the wood,
as of some mystic underworld--half shadow and half dream. No, Lord
Mallow could never forget it; nor yet the way that flying figure in
Lincoln green led them by bog and swamp, over clay and gravel--through
as many varieties of soil as if she had been trying to give them a
practical lesson in geology; across snaky ditches and pebbly fords;
through furze-bushes and thickets of holly; through everything likely
to prove aggravating to the temper of a wellbred horse; and finally,
before giving them breathing-time, she led them up the clayey side of a
hill, as steep as a house, on the top of which she drew rein, and
commanded them to admire the view.

"This is Acres Down, and there are the Needles," she said, pointing her
whip at the dim blue horizon. "If it were a clear day, and your sight
were long enough, I daresay you would see Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney,
and Sark. But, I think, to-day you must be content with the Needles.
Can you see them?" she asked Lord Mallow.

"See them!" exclaimed the Irishman. "I can see well enough to thread
one of them if I wanted."

"Now, you've seen the Isle of Wight," said Vixen. "That's a point
accomplished. The ardent desire of everyone in the Forest is to see the
Isle of Wight. They are continually mounting hills and gazing into
space, in order to get a glimpse at that chalky little island. It seems
the main object of everybody's existence."

"They might as well go and live there at once, if they're so fond of
it," suggested Lord Mallon.

"Yes; and then they would be straining their eyes in the endeavour to
see the Great Horse--that's a group of firs on the top of a hill, and
one of our Forest seamarks. That frantic desire to behold distant
objects has always seemed to me to be one of the feeblest tendencies of
the human mind. Now you have seen the Needles, we have accomplished a
solemn duty, and I may show you our woods."

Vixen shook her rein and trotted recklessly down a slippery path,
jumped a broad black ditch, and plunged into the rece