explored, in which
something like that was really done; only the stories were not
fairy-tales, but legends of holy men and women; and among the branches
of the trees were fixed most beautifully coloured glass pictures of
those holy people, who had all lived and died, and some of whom had
been buried, in those forests, hundreds of years ago. Most of the
forests were very ancient--older than the thrones of many kingdoms; and
men lived and delighted in them long before Columbus sailed into
unknown seas to discover America. Many, indeed, had been blown down
and destroyed by a terrible storm which swept over the world when Henry
VIII. ruled in England, and only wrecks of them now remained for any
one to see, but others, which had survived the wild weather of those
days, were as wonderful and as lovely as a dream. The tall trees in
them sent out curving branches which interlaced high overhead, shutting
out the blue sky and making a sweet and solemn dimness, and nearly all
the light that streamed in between the fair round trunks and the
arching boughs was like that of a splendid sunset, only it was there
all day long and never faded out till night fell. And in some of the
forests there were great magical roses, of a hundred brilliant colours
crowded together, and as big as the biggest cart-wheel, or bigger.

These woods were places of happy quietude and comfort and gladness of
heart; but, instead of Oak-men, there were many Angels.

Here and there, too, in the silent avenues, mighty warriors and saintly
abbots, and statesmen bishops, and it might be even a king or a queen,
had been buried; and over their graves there were sometimes images of
them lying carved in marble or alabaster, and sometimes there had been
built the loveliest little chapels all sculptured over with tracery of
flowers and foliage.

"True, father?"

"True as true, dear. Some day I shall take you to see for yourself."

We know a dip in a dingle where the woodcutters have left a log among
the hazels, and here, having wheeled Guy into a dappling of sunny discs
and leaf-shadows in a grassy bay, we sat down on the log, and talked in
an undertone. Our failure to find the Oak-men's church reminded me of
the old legends of lost and invisible churches, the bells of which are
heard ringing under the snow, or in the depths of the woods, or far
away in burning deserts, or fathom-deep beneath the blue sea; but the
pilgrim or the chance wayfarer who has hea