as many as fifteen
hundred years ago. How old is the oldest oak-tree? Joseph inquired, and
Azariah had again to hazard the answer that a thousand years would make
an old tree. And when will these trees be in leaf, Sir, and may we come
to Arimathea when they are in leaf? And look, somebody has been felling
trees here. Who do you think it was, Sir? Azariah looked round. The
forest must have been supplying the city with firewood for many years,
he said. All these trees are young and they are too regularly spaced for
a natural growth. But higher up the hills the woods are denser and
darker, and there we may find some old trees. Any badgers and foxes?
Joseph asked, and shall we see any wolves?

The sunny woods were threaded with little paths, and Joseph cast curious
eyes upon them all. The first led him into bracken so deep that he did
not venture farther, and the second took him to the verge of a dark
hollow so dismal that he came running back to ask if there were
crocodiles in the waters he had discovered. He did not give his
preceptor time to answer the difficult question, but laid his hand upon
his arm and whispered that he was to look between two rocks, for a
jackal was there, slinking away--turning his pointed muzzle to us now
and then. To see he isn't followed, Azariah added: and the observation
endeared him so to Joseph that the boy walked for a moment pensively in
the path they were following. It turned into the forest, and they had
not gone very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if
silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full
of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but
it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the
snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something
that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of
the trees--is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life
was certainly breathing about him, and he regretted he was without a
sense to apprehend this life.

Again and again it seemed that the forest was about to whisper its
secret, but something always happened to interrupt. Once it was
certainly Azariah's fault, for just as the trees were about to speak he
picked up a leaf and began to explain how the shape of an oak leaf
differed from that of the leaf of the chestnut and the ash. A patter was
heard among the leaves. There she goes--a hare! Joseph said, and a
mome