seemed, indeed, to think that he was well out of the way.

There were few English left to mourn him: the baron would trust
none in the castle, and the churls and thralls of the village had
perished or taken refuge in the greenwoods, which lay, like a sea
of verdure, to the north of the domain of Aescendune, where it was
shrewdly suspected they might be found, enjoying the freedom of the
forests, and making free with the red deer.

It was a primeval forest, wherein were trees which had witnessed
old Druids, silver knife in hand, cutting the mistletoe, or which
had stood in the vigour of youth when Caesar's legionaries had
hunted those same Druids to their last retreats. Giant oaks cast
their huge limbs abroad, and entwined in matrimonial love with the
silver beech; timid deer with their fawns wantoned in the shade
beneath, or wild swine munched the acorns. Here were slow sedgy
streams, now illumined, as by a ray of light, when some monster of
the inland waters flashed along after his scaly prey, or stirred by
a sudden plunge as the otter sprang from the bank. Sometimes the
brock took an airing abroad, and the wolf came to look after his
interests and see what he could snatch.

While, in the upper regions, amidst that sea of leaves, whole
tribes of birds, long since vanished from England, carried on their
aerial business, and now and then the eagle made a swoop amongst
them, and then there was a grand scattering.

Many a lonely pool there was, where the kingfisher had never seen
the face of man; many a bushel, not to say waggon load, of nuts
rotted for want of modern schoolboys to gather them; many an acre