IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN. 163 



masters who neither ate nor slept, that they might 

 never for a second surrender their overseership. 



There are no clocks in Arden ; the sun bestows 

 the day, and no impertinence of men destroys its 

 charm by calculating its value and marking it with 

 a price. The only computers of time are the great 

 trees whose shadows register the unbroken march 

 of light from east to west. Even the days and 

 nights lost that painful distinctness which they had 

 for us when they gave us a constant sense of loss, 

 an incessant apprehension of change and age. Their 

 shining procession leaves no such records in Arden ; 

 they come like the waves whose ceaseless flow sings 

 of the boundless sea whence they come. They 

 bring no consciousness of ebbing years and joys 

 and strength ; they bring rather a sense of eternal 

 resource and beneficence. In Arden one never 

 feels in haste ; there is always time enough and to 

 spare ; in fact, the word time is never used in the 

 vernacular of the Forest except when reference is 

 made to the enslaved world without. There were 

 moments at the beginning when we felt a little 

 bewildered by our freedom, and I think Rosalind 

 secretly longed for the familiar tones of the cuckoo 

 clock which had chimed so many years in and out 

 for us in the old days. One must get accustomed 

 even to good fortune, and after one has been con 

 fined within the narrow limits of a little plot of 

 earth the possession of a continent confuses and 

 perplexes. But men are born to good fortune if 



