but
it is the remains of the grand old oaks that attract the tourist and
summer wanderer. The wood has a ground-work of exhaustless ferns, the
delicate birches flutter in the warm winds, their peculiar shade
contrasting with the greenery around them. Here and there oaks of
different ages and altitudes rise gray, gnarled, and almost
leafless,--oaks on which a thousand tempests have beaten, and around
which ten thousand storms have blown. In Henry II.'s time not only
Nottingham, but the whole of England, was covered with oaks.

[Illustration: SHAMBLE OAK.]

Tommy Toby was very urgent to visit some of the old historic oaks of
Sherwood, especially such as are associated with quaint stories and
tragic histories.

Procuring a guide, the Class went first to see Shamble Oak. Think of
it: in the main circuit it is thirty-four feet! It is called Shamble
Oak because a butcher once used its hollow trunk to conceal stolen
sheep. He was hung on an oak.

The guide next took the boys to a dreamy old place called Welbeck
Park, to see the Greendale Oak, supposed to be seven hundred years
old, and which has a circumference of more than thirty-five feet!

"It looks as though it had the rheumatism," said Tommy. "With all of
its crutches and canes it will not live many years longer. Do you
think it will?"

"I think it likely to outlive all of us," said the guide. "More than
one hundred and fifty years ago an arch was cut in this tree, and a
lord rode through it on his wedding day. It was very, very old then;
but the lord is gone, and the oak lives."

[Illustration: GREENDALE OAK.]

The guide procured for the party a vehicle, and drove to Parliament
Oak, under which it is said that Edward I. held a Parliament in 1290.
The tree still furnishes green boughs. Its girth is about twenty-nine
feet.

Newstead Abbey, the home of Lord Byron, forms a part of the old
forest of Sherwood, and is but a short distance from Mansfield. It was
founded by Henry II., and presents one of the picturesque and
interesting ruins in this part of England.

"You will not be allowed to visit the Abbey," said the guide. "The
rooms of Lord Byron remain just as he left them; his bedstead, with
gilded coronets, his pictures, portraits of friends, writing-table,
and all; but it is private property, and visitors are not allowed."

"The Abbey was built by Henry as one of the many peace offerings which
he made for the murder of Thomas a Becket," said Master Lewis