The dead Forest King 207 



one to follow ? It is pure chance. On again, with more 

 tall bracken, thorn thickets, and maple bushes, and noting 

 now the strange absence of living things. Not a bird 

 rises startled from the boughs, not a rabbit crosses the 

 way ; for in the forest, as in the fields, there are places 

 haunted and places deserted, save by occasional passing 

 visitors. Suddenly the bracken ceases, and the paths dis- 

 appear under a thick grove of beeches, whose dead leaves 

 and beech-mast seem to have smothered vegetation. 



Insensibly the low ground rises again, the brake and 

 bushes and underwood reappear, but the trees grow thinner 

 and farther apart; they are mainly oaks, which like to 

 stand separate in their grandeur. There is one dead oak 

 all alone in the midst of the underwood, with a wide space 

 around it. A vast grey trunk, split and riven and hollow, 

 with a single pointed branch rising high above it, dead too, 

 and grey : not a living twig, not so much as a brown leaf, 

 gives evidence of lingering life. The oak is dead ; but 

 even in his death he rules, and the open space around him 

 shows how he once overshadowed and prevented the growth 

 of meaner trees. More oaks, then a broad belt of beeches, 

 and out suddenly into an opening. 



It is but a stone's throw across a level mead walled in 

 with tall trees, whose leaves in myriads lie on the brown 

 tinted grass. One great thicket only grows in the midst 

 of it. The nights are chilly here, as elsewhere ; but in the 

 day, the winds being kept off by the trees and underwood, 

 it becomes quite summer-like, and the leaves turn to their 

 most brilliant hues. The stems of the bracken are yellow ; 

 the fronds vary from pale green and gold, commingled, to 

 a reddish bronze. The hawthorn leaves are slight yellow, 

 some touched with red, others almost black. Maple bushes 

 glow with gold. Here the beeches show great spots of 



