934, OUR .WOODLAND TREES. 
might determine to drink sparingly in order not 
to forget the necessity for the midnight excursion 
to the forest, he had taken the precaution to lock 
and heavily bar the door of egress. But the host 
had this time reckoned without his guests; and 
great was his amazement to hear from his seat at 
the board the sound of heavy, crashing blows from 
the direction of the hall. Rushing there in con- 
sternation, his dismay was extreme at beholding 
his wooden outpost shivering and splintering 
before the lusty onset of half-a-dozen brawny 
woodmen, armed with gleaming hatchets, which 
at each blow told with terrible effect even on the 
oaken panels of the massive door. 
These men, either anticipating the possibility of 
a ruse, or anxious to save themselves the trouble 
of going to their homes to fetch their axes after 
the banquet, had ingeniously concealed these 
effective instruments about their persons; and 
lucky was the chance which made them do so, as 
the event proved, for the barrier which their 
treacherous host had thought to be—as it would 
have been to unarmed men—impregnable, was not 
long in yielding to the heavy and repeated assault 
