Away in the distance before and behind, the green boughs, now turning in places to a coppery redness, shot their broad arches across the track.

The still summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest.

Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side.

Save the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere--the sweet restful silence of nature.
And yet there was no want of life--the whole wide wood was full of it.
Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the path upon some fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted upon the outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and dubious eye.

Once it was a wild sow which scuttled out of the bracken, with two young sounders at her heels, and once a lordly red staggard walked daintily out from among the tree trunks, and looked around him with the fearless gaze of one who lived under the King's own high protection.