He had a great friend in the forester. As soon as he was dressed in the morning he started for Father Archambauld’s, just as the old man’s wife, before going to her Parisians, as she called her employers, served her husband’s breakfast in a fresh, clean room hung with a light green paper that represented the same hunting-scene over and over again. When the forester had finished his meal, he and little Jack started out on a long tramp. Father Archambauld showed the child the pheasants’ nests, with their eggs like large pearls, built in the roots of the trees; the haunts of the partridges, the frightened hares, and the young kids. The hawthorn’s white blossoms perfumed the air, and a variety of wild flowers enamelled the turf. The forester’s duty was to protect the birds and their young broods from all injury, and to destroy the moles and snakes. He received a certain sum for the heads or tails of these vermin, and every six months carried to Corbiel a bag of dry and dusty relics. He would have been better pleased could he have taken also the heads of the poachers, with whom he was in constant conflict. He had also a great deal of trouble with the peasants who injured his trees. A doe could be replaced, a dead pheasant was no great matter; but a tree, the growth of years, was a vastly different affair. He watched them so carefully that he knew all their maladies. One species of fir was attacked by tiny worms, which come in some mysterious way by thousands. They select the strongest and handsomest specimens, and take possession of them. The trees have only their resinous sap as a weapon of defence. This sap they pour over their enemies, and over their eggs deposited in the crevices of the bark. Jack watched this unequal contest with the greatest interest, and saw the slow dropping of these odorous tears. Sometimes the fir-tree won the victory, but too often it perished and withered slowly, until at last the giant of the forest; whose lofty top had been the haunt of singing-birds, where bees had made their home, and which had sheltered a thousand different lives, stood white and ghastly as if struck by lightning. During these walks through the woods, the forester and his companion talked very little. They listened rather to the sweet and innumerable sounds about them. The sound of the wind varied with every tree that it touched. Among the pines it moaned and sighed like the sea. Among the birches and aspens, it rattled the leaves like castanets; while from the borders of the ponds, which were numerous in this part of the forest, came gentle rustlings from the long, slender, silken-coated reeds. Jack learned to distinguish all these sounds and to love them.