Joseph stood waiting on the edge of the rocks and cried out in the fulness of his joy on seeing his preceptor appear above the cliff, and at once fell to rolling himself over and over.  Just as I expected he would, Azariah remarked to himself.  And then, starting to his feet, Joseph began gathering flowers, but in a little while he stood still, his nosegay dropping flower by flower, for his thoughts had taken flight.  The doves, the doves! he cried, looking into the blue and white sky.  The doves have their nests in the woods, the larks build in the grass he said, and asked Azariah to come with him.  The nest was on a tuft of grass.  But I’ve not touched them, he said.  Three years ago I used to rob all the nests and blow the eggs, you see, for I was making a collection.  Azariah asked him if the lark would grieve for her eggs, and Joseph answered that he supposed she would soon forget them.  Hark to his singing! and he ran on into the outskirts of the woods, coming back a few minutes afterwards to ask Azariah to hasten, for the wood was more beautiful than any wood he had ever seen.  And if you know the trees in which the doves build I will climb and get the nest.  Doves build in taller trees than these, in fir-trees, Azariah answered.  But this is a pretty wood, Joseph.  And he looked round the quiet sunny oak wood and began his relation that this wood was probably the remains of the ancient forests that had covered the country when the Israelites came out of the north of Arabia.  How long ago was that, Sir?  Joseph asked, and Azariah hazarded the answer that it might be as many as fifteen hundred years ago.  How old is the oldest oak-tree?  Joseph inquired, and Azariah had again to hazard the answer that a thousand years would make an old tree.  And when will these trees be in leaf, Sir, and may we come to Arimathea when they are in leaf?  And look, somebody has been felling trees here.  Who do you think it was, Sir?  Azariah looked round.  The forest must have been supplying the city with firewood for many years, he said.  All these trees are young and they are too regularly spaced for a natural growth.  But higher up the hills the woods are denser and darker, and there we may find some old trees.  Any badgers and foxes?  Joseph asked, and shall we see any wolves?

The sunny woods were threaded with little paths, and Joseph cast curious eyes upon them all.  The first led him into bracken so deep that he did not venture farther, and the second took him to the verge of a dark hollow so dismal that he came running back to ask if there were crocodiles in the waters he had discovered.  He did not give his preceptor time to answer the difficult question, but laid his hand upon his arm and whispered that he was to look between two rocks, for a jackal was there, slinking away—­turning his pointed muzzle to us now and then.  To see he isn’t followed, Azariah added:  and the observation endeared him so to Joseph that the boy walked for a moment pensively in the path they were