following.  It turned into the forest, and they had not gone very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch.  The life of the trees—­is that it? he asked himself.  A remote and mysterious life was certainly breathing about him, and he regretted he was without a sense to apprehend this life.

Again and again it seemed that the forest was about to whisper its secret, but something always happened to interrupt.  Once it was certainly Azariah’s fault, for just as the trees were about to speak he picked up a leaf and began to explain how the shape of an oak leaf differed from that of the leaf of the chestnut and the ash.  A patter was heard among the leaves.  There she goes—­a hare!  Joseph said, and a moment afterwards a white thing appeared.  A white weasel, Azariah said.  Shall we follow him?  Joseph asked, and Azariah answered that it would be useless to follow.  We should soon miss them in the thickets.  And he continued his discourse upon trees, hoping that Joseph would never again mistake a sycamore for a chestnut.  And what is that tree so dark and gloomy rising up through all the other trees, Joseph asked, so much higher than any of them?  That is a cedar, Azariah said.  Do doves build in cedars?  Azariah did not know, and the tree did not inspire a climb:  it seemed to forbid any attempt on its privacy.  Do trees talk when they are alone?  Joseph asked Azariah, and his preceptor gave the very sensible answer that the life of trees is unknown to us, but that trees had always awakened religious emotions in men.  The earliest tribes were tree-worshippers, which was very foolish, for we can fell trees and put them to our usage.

They had come to a part of the forest in which there seemed to be neither birds nor beasts and Joseph had begun to feel the forest a little wearisome and to wish for a change, when the trees suddenly stopped, and before them lay a sunny interspace full of tall grass with here and there a fallen tree, and on these trees prone great lizards sunned themselves, nodding their heads in a motion ever the same.  Something had died in that beautiful interspace, for a vulture rose sullenly and went away over the top of the trees, and Azariah begged Joseph not to pursue his search but to hasten out of the smell of the carrion that a little breeze had just carried towards them.  Besides, this thick grass is full of snakes, he said, and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than a snake issued from a thick tuft, stopped and hissed.  Snakes feed on mice and rats?  Joseph asked, and come out of their holes to catch them, isn’t that so, Sir?  Everything is out this sunny morning,