In the Forest of Stone 5

gether, and as big as the biggest cart-wheel,
or bigger.

These woods were places of happy quietude
and comfort and gladness of heart; but, in-
stead of Oak-men, there were many Angels.

Here and there, too, in the silent avenues,
mighty warriors, and saintly abbots, and
statesmen bishops, and it might be even a
king or a queen, had been buried; and over
their graves there were sometimes images of
them lying carved in marble or alabaster,
and sometimes there had been built the
loveliest little chapels all sculptured over
with tracery of flowers and foliage.

“True, father?”

“True as true, dear. Some day I shall
take you to see for yourself.”

We know a dip in a dingle where the
woodcutters have left a log among the
hazels, and here, having wheeled Guy into a
dappling of sunny discs and leaf-shadows in
a grassy bay, we sat down on the log, and
talked in an undertone. Our failure to find
the Oak-men’s church reminded me of the
old legends of lost and invisible churches,
the bells of which are heard ringing under