Here were the woods at length, the undulating outlines of which had wooed him from afar with such enticing promise; Robert’s feet fell almost noiselessly on a crumbling carpet of pine-needles, and he paused a moment to sniff the aromatic scent approvingly; then he went on. Now the green depths engulfed him on every side; all was gentle gloom, exquisite undefinable fragrance; silence the more palpable because of the never-ceasing stir which seemed to pervade it. What a variety, what a multiplicity of scarcely perceptible noises go to make up the breathing of the wood! The flapping of leaf against leaf, the swaying of twigs, the rattle of falling nuts or sticks, the falling apart of fronds of moss, the dripping of tiny drops of dew or rain, the roamings of minute insects--each sound infinitesimal in itself, yet repeated at thousands and millions of points--in this harmony of life and motion, combining with but never subduing the stillness of the forest, lies its magnetism. Sharper sounds break the all-pervading hush from time to time without disturbing it; the cooing of a dove, the flight of blackbird or thrush, the tapping of a woodpecker, the croaking of a frog, the hasty passage of a mouse through dry leaves; while the barking of a dog in some distant village, and the clanging of sheep-bells far away seem nevertheless to form part of the mysterious whole. Robert pushed his hat to the back of his head, rested his gun against a forked sapling of birch, and, taking out his pipe, was proceeding to fill it, when he suddenly started and threw back his head, inhaling the air with a frown. A certain acrid penetrating odour was making its way towards him, drowning the more delicate essences of the forest growths. “’Tis wood smoke!” said Robert, and then his brow cleared. “Mayhap somebody is burnin’ weeds nigh to this place,” he said, and went on filling his pipe.