32 CONVERSATIONS ON THE 



you may well suppose when 1 tell you that it- 

 was standing about eighty years since, and 

 that it was three hundred years before that, 

 when the room was used as an alehouse. 

 Oaks, you know, are very slow growing trees, 

 and very few of them get their full growth in 

 less than a hundred years, and then they 

 will stand a long time before they begin to 

 rot. In Torwood, in Scotland, there was very 

 lately another huge oak, or rather the remnant 

 of one, for there was hardly enough of it 

 left to show where it had stood ; it is supposed 

 to have been about twelve feet thick when it 

 was full grown, but nobody knows any thing 

 certain as to its size or its age. You have 

 heard of Sir William Wallace, have you not ?" 

 " Oh yes ; we read of him in the ' Tales of a 

 Grandfather :' he was a brave Scotchman, 

 and fought for liberty and his country, like our 

 Washington." 



" And how long is it since he lived ?" 

 "About five hundred years. Uncle Philip." 

 " Well, it is said, and the story has been 

 told and believed for a great many years, that 

 Wallace and his principal officers used to 

 sleep in the hollow trunk of the oak I have 

 just told you of, and it has been called the 



