For about fifty feet above the ground the trunk grew straight and solid like a column.

At that level, it split into two massive boughs; and in the fork, like a mast-headed seaman, there stood a man in a green tabard, spying far and wide.

The sun glistened upon his hair; with one hand he shaded his eyes to look abroad, and he kept slowly rolling his head from side to side, with the regularity of a machine.
The lads exchanged glances.
"Let us try to the left," said Dick.

"We had near fallen foully, Jack." Ten minutes afterwards they struck into a beaten path.
"Here is a piece of forest that I know not," Dick remarked.

"Where goeth me this track ?" "Let us even try," said Matcham.
A few yards further, the path came to the top of a ridge and began to go down abruptly into a cup-shaped hollow.