And like many another monarch, it was only a ghost of its earlier grandeur.
For from every outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss.

For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and health not at all.
Then year by year the moss had grown and had taken toll of the bark and sap.

At last it had killed the tree on which it fed.
And its own source of life being withdrawn itself had died.
So, now the gaunt tree with its symmetrical spread of branches stood lifeless.

And its tons of low-hanging festooned moss was as void of life as was the tree they had killed.
Tinder-dry it hung there, a beauteous, tragic, spectacle, towering high above the surrounding flatness of landscape, visible for miles by land and by sea.
Fifty yards beyond a high interlaced hedge of vines bordered the clearing.

Toward this Gavin bent his idle steps, wondering vaguely how such a lofty and impenetrable wall of vine was supported from the far side.
Claire had stopped to call off Bobby Burns who had discovered a highly dramatic toad-hole on the edge of the lawn and who was digging enthusiastically at it with both flying fore-feet, casting up a cloud of dirt and cutting into the sward's neat border.