nt afterwards a white thing appeared. A white weasel, Azariah said.
Shall we follow him? Joseph asked, and Azariah answered that it would be
useless to follow. We should soon miss them in the thickets. And he
continued his discourse upon trees, hoping that Joseph would never again
mistake a sycamore for a chestnut. And what is that tree so dark and
gloomy rising up through all the other trees, Joseph asked, so much
higher than any of them? That is a cedar, Azariah said. Do doves build
in cedars? Azariah did not know, and the tree did not inspire a climb:
it seemed to forbid any attempt on its privacy. Do trees talk when they
are alone? Joseph asked Azariah, and his preceptor gave the very
sensible answer that the life of trees is unknown to us, but that trees
had always awakened religious emotions in men. The earliest tribes were
tree-worshippers, which was very foolish, for we can fell trees and put
them to our usage.

They had come to a part of the forest in which there seemed to be
neither birds nor beasts and Joseph had begun to feel the forest a
little wearisome and to wish for a change, when the trees suddenly
stopped, and before them lay a sunny interspace full of tall grass with
here and there a fallen tree, and on these trees prone great lizards
sunned themselves, nodding their heads in a motion ever the same.
Something had died in that beautiful interspace, for a vulture rose
sullenly and went away over the top of the trees, and Azariah begged
Joseph not to pursue his search but to hasten out of the smell of the
carrion that a little breeze had just carried towards them. Besides,
this thick grass is full of snakes, he said, and the words were no
sooner out of his mouth than a snake issued from a thick tuft, stopped
and hissed. Snakes feed on mice and rats? Joseph asked, and come out of
their holes to catch them, isn't that so, Sir? Everything is out this
sunny morning, seeking its food, Azariah answered: snakes after mice,
vultures after carrion. This way, Joseph--yonder we may rest awhile, but
we must be careful not to sit upon a snake; that knoll yonder is free
from vermin, for the trees that grow about it are fir-trees and snakes
do not like any place where they can easily be detected. And they sat on
the fibrous ground and looked up into the darkness of the withered
pines--withered everywhere except in the topmost branches that alone
caught the light. A sad place to sit in, Joseph said. Don't you feel the