MR. GREEN. 
dense forest up to the very mountain tops. On the 
back range was this everlasting forest, beyond ; the 
hill-tops was nothing but blue sky, when it could 
be seen ; and that was seldom, except in the dry cold 
months of the north-east monsoon. Mist generally 
enveloped the top of the mountains. No other estate 
was near, so that it could be likened to a iarge pri- 
son, whose walls were standing jungle. And what a 
email object even a large estate looks, when it is 
only a spot, cut out of a mass of forest. The extent 
seems so small, as compared with what meets the 
eye, around and beyond it. 
On this estate, of course, there was a bungalow, in 
the (then) usual style, from the verandah of which 
Mr. Green had gazed, during his leisure hours and 
on Sundays, until every tree, with any s]3ecialty, or 
peculiarity, in the surrounding forest, had become 
quite familiar to his eye. He had become quite tired 
looking out on the monotonous scene, in fact had 
turned the back of his arm-chair to it, reclining on 
which, after breakfast, he now, for a change, hxed 
his eyes, steadily, on the mud wall of the bungalow. 
In this dreamy state, he heard a faint sound, a well- 
known one, which made him start suddenly up, all 
animation, and strain and stretch his eyes over the 
vast extent of forest. Eagerly he looked, looked in 
vain, listened, and sat down again. “ It must have 
just been an old dhn tree, rotten and decaved, which 
had tumbled down in the forest.” Frequently one used 
to be st trtled wdth this sound, in the silent jungles, 
the curious fact being that it was generally always 
on a calm quiet day ; or was it that it was only 
heard on a calm day. An old tree — wdio can tell how 
old, how many centuries of time it had seen — had be- 
come perfectly rotten in the smm, full of decay : it 
was wonderful how it held togetl3er at all, but its 
time had come at last, and down it came suddenly 
roaring and crashing, the echoes of its fall making the 
whole surrounding forest resound, and the dust or 
“ stour ” created by its fall rising out of the jungles 
far over the tree-tops, like a cloud of smoke. 
The next day, after breakfast, Mr. Green was again 
startled by two or three faint distant sounds of falling 
trees. He could not understand it, or, rather, he began 
to have some idea what it was, and became very 
hdgetty. On stretching his eyesight over the unbroken 
expanse of jungle in the direction where the sounds 
came from, he fancied there was . some charge in the 
unbroken view — in fact, he fancied, it might be only 
fancy, that a portion of the forest seemed lighter, or 
somewhat different, he could not tell what, from 
