The three walked slowly down through this leafy wild till they were lost in it.

‘Now,’ said Rollo to the little lady in brown, ’what do you think ought to be done here?’

’I should like to make ways through al this, if I could.  True wildwood ways, I mean,—­that one must look for and hardly find; with here and there a great clearance that should seem to have made itself.  What sort of a track would a hurricane make here, for instance?’

‘A hurricane!’ said Mr. Falkirk, facing round upon his ward.

‘Rather indiscriminate in its action,’ observed Rollo.

‘The clearance a hurricane makes in a forest,’ Mr. Falkirk went on, ’is generally in the tree tops.  The ground is left a wreck.’

’Any system of clearing that I know, brings the trees to the ground,’ said Wych Hazel.  ’But I mean—­I like the woods dearly as they are, Mr. Falkirk; but if I meddled with them, then I would have something to shew for it.  I would have thoughts instead of the trees, and vistas full of visions.  If anything is cut here, it ought to be in a broad hurricane track right down to the West, where

“The wind shall seek them vainly, and the sun Gaze on the vacant space for centuries.”

I do not like fussing with such woods.’

‘What thought is expressed by a wide system of devastation?’ asked Rollo, facing her.

‘Power.  Do not you like power, Mr. Rollo?’ she said with a demure arch of her eyebrows.

Rollo bit his lips furtively but vigorously, and then demanded to know if Napoleon was her favourite character in history.

‘No,’ said Wych Hazel—­’he did not know what to do with his power when he had it.  A very common mistake, Mr. Rollo, you will find.’

‘Don’t make it,’ said he, smiling.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Mr. Falkirk, turning round upon them.  ’Miss Hazel, we are here in obedience to your wishes.  What do you propose to do, now we are here?  Do you know what needs doing?’

‘What does, Mr. Falkirk?—­in your opinion?’ She came close to him, linking her hands upon his arm.  ’Tell me first, and then I will tell you.’

’There must be a great many trees cut, Miss Hazel; they have grown up to crowd upon each other very mischievously.  And a large quantity of saplings and underbrush must be cleared away.  You see where I have begun to mark trees for the axe.’

‘Truly, sir, I do!  Mr. Falkirk, that bent oak is a beauty.’

‘It will never make a fine tree.  And the oak beside it will.’

‘Well—­it is to be congratulated,’ said Miss Hazel, pensively.  ’But what is to become of my poor woods, at that rate?  There is an elm with a branch too many on one side; and a birch keeping house lovingly with a hemlock.  If “woodcraft” means only such line-and-rule decimation, Mr. Falkirk—­’

’I don’t know what you mean by woodcraft, my dear.  I mean, taking care of the woods.’