CHAPTER VI.

Summer wore away; the oats in the forest were garnered and the vintage had begun in the vine-lands.  It was a right glorious sunny day; and if you ask me at which time of the year forest life is the sweeter, whether in Springtide or in Autumn, I could scarce say.

Aye, it is fair indeed in the woods when Spring comes gaily in.  Spring is the very Saviour, as it were, of all the numberless folk, great and small, which grow green and blossom there, wherefore the forest holds festival for his birthday and cradle feast as is but fitting!  The fir-tree lights up brighter tips to its boughs, as children do with tapers at Christmastide.  Then comes the largesse.  It lasts much more than one evening, and the gifts bestowed on all are without number, and bright and various indeed to behold.  As a father’s tinkling bell brings the children together, so the snowdrop bells call forth all the other flowers.  First and foremost comes the primrose, and cowslips—­Heaven’s keys as we call them—­open the gates to all the other children of the Spring.  “Come forth, come forth!” the returning birds shout from out the bushes, and silver-grey catkins sprout on every twig.  Beech leaves burst off their sharp, brown sheaths and open to the light, as soft as taffety and as green as emeralds.

The other trees follow the example, and so teach their boughs to make a leafy shade against the sun as it mounts higher.  Every creature that loves its kind finds a voice under the blossoming May, and the dumb forest is full of the call and answer of thankful and gladsome loving things which have met together, and of sweet tunefulness and songs of bridal joy.

Round nests have come into being in a thousand secret places—­in the tree-tops, in the thick greenwood of the bushes, in the reeds of the marsh; ere long young living things are twittering there, the father and mother-birds call each other, singing to be of good cheer, and taking joy in caring for their young.  At that season of love, of growth, of unfolding life, meseems, as I walk through the woods, that the loving-kindness of the Most High is more than ever nigh unto me; for the forest is as a church, a glorious cathedral at highest festival, all filled with light and song, and decked in every nook and corner with gay fresh flowers and leafy garlands.

Then all is suddenly hushed.  It is summer.

But in Autumn the forest is a banqueting-hall where men must say farewell, but with good cheer, in hope of a happy meeting.  All that has lived is hasting to the grave.  Nevertheless on some fair days everything wears as it were the face of a friend who holds forth a hand at parting.  The wide vaults of the woods are finely bedecked with red and yellow splendor, and albeit the voices of birds are few, albeit the cry of the jay, and the song of the nightingale, and the pipe of the bull-finch must be mute, the greenwood