Ishmael, Reuben, and Sam, the teamster, loaded the wagon with the boxes and set out for Tanglewood, Sam driving the team, Ishmael and Reuben walking beside it.

Through all the fertile and highly cultivated fields that lay along the banks of the river they went, until they reached the borders of the forest, where Reuben’s cottage stood.  They did not pause here, but passed it and entered the forest.  What a forest it was!  They had scarcely entered it when they became so buried in shade that they might have imagined themselves a thousand miles deep in some primeval wilderness, where never the foot of man had trod.  The road along which they went was grass-grown.  The trees, which grew to an enormous size and gigantic height, interwove their branches thickly overhead.  Sometimes these branches intermingled so low that they grazed the top of the wagon as it passed, while men and horses had to bow their heads.

“Why isn’t this road cleared, Uncle Reuben?” inquired Ishmael.

“Because it is as much as a man’s place is worth to touch a tree in this forest, Ishmael,” replied Reuben.

“But why is that?  The near branches of these trees need lopping away from the roadside; we can scarcely get along.”

“I know it, Ishmael; but the judge won’t have a tree in Tanglewood so much as touched; it is his crochet.”

“True, for you, Marse Gray,” spoke up Sam; “last time I trimmed away the branches from the sides of this here road, ole marse threatened if I cut off so much as a twig from one of the trees again he’d take off a joint of one of my fingers to see how I’d like to be ‘trimmed’, he said.”

Ishmael laughed and remarked: 

“But the road will soon be closed unless the trees are cut away.”

“Sartin it will; but he don’t care for consequences; he will have his way; that’s the reason why he never could keep any overseer but me; there was always such a row about the trees and things, as he always swore they should grow as they had a mind to, in spite of all the overseers in the world.  I let him have his own will; it’s none of my business to contradict him,” said Reuben.

“But what will you do when the road closes, how will you manage to get heavy boxes up to the house?” laughed Ishmael.

“Wheel ’em up in a hand-barrow, I s’pose, and if the road gets too narrow for that, unpack ’em and let the niggers tote the parcels up piece-meal.”

Thicker and thicker grew the trees as they penetrated deeper into the forest; more obstructed and difficult became the road.  Suddenly, without an instant’s warning, they came upon the house, a huge, square building of gray stone, so overgrown with moss, ivy, and creeping vines that scarcely a glimpse of the wall could be seen.  Its colors, therefore, blended so well with the forest trees that grew thickly and closely around it, that one could scarcely suspect the existence of a building there.