Of the few human beings who haunted it a few years ago, old Oliver the woodman was the only one to whom it had wholly yielded up its secrets; and when one day he was found under his favourite old oak-tree, wrapped in a slumber from which there was no awakening, we felt that the good genius of the wood had vanished, leaving no successor. But on the morning of that 16th day of May on which my story begins and ends, old Oliver was still vigorous, and had risen at daybreak in order to finish his work early. He meant to set forward about midday for the neighbouring town on the hill; for it was fairday, or “club” as we call it in these parts, at Northstow, and he wished once more to buy a fairing for the rheumatic old wife sitting by the chimney-corner at home. He is sitting, and eating his dinner, at the foot of his favourite oak, which is separated by a few yards of bluebells and undergrowth from one of the grassy rides, or “lights” (as we call them) which intersect the wood, and let sunshine and fresh air into its tangled depths. It is his favourite tree, partly because its gray-lichened stem divides on one side, as it nears the ground, into two big root-branches which leave a comfortable space between them--a mossy arm-chair of which he only knows the comfort who has toiled since daybreak without ceasing; and partly because the tree is old, as old as the abbey of Truerne which once stood under the shadow of the wood in the meadows below; and because it is hollow enough to be the home of a family of brown owls, whose ancestors had been tenants of the wood long before the monks became its owners. These owls were some of Oliver’s best friends; he seldom saw them, nor they him; but, boy and man, he had known them for more than half a century, and knew them well to be discreet and quiet creatures, who did no harm and gave no trouble to any one but vermin. There was [Illustration: He is sitting and eating his dinner at the foot of his favourite oak.--P. 212.] a silent, mysterious sageness about their ways, which suited well with the old man’s humour.