Nevertheless, here and there some stalwart stripling has escaped notice long enough to have attained such huge dimensions as to evoke even the respect of this hard-headed, matter-of-fact Saxon--such a one is still standing in a wood not far from Maele Castle, the former country residence of the Counts of Flanders. Maybe it was already a great tree when Marguerite and Jeanne were still children living under the guardianship of Philip of Namur and Bourchard d'Avesnes, and that when they went out from the sultry town in summer-time to the cool of Maele woods they played beneath its branches. There is a still more famous tree a little further off, but within measurable distance of Bruges. The time-honoured yew tree of Löo is said to be more than two thousand years old. It stands beside an ancient gateway in the main street of this picturesque little town--once the home of Bertulph's murderer, the perfidious William of Löo, and is associated with the name of no less remote a personage than Julius Cæsar. The country folk will tell you he once tied his horse to it. A fragment too of the primeval forest in which Robert the Frisian built Winendael is still standing, and here also there is some old timber. Let the visitor to Bruges, when he has fatigued his eyes with the glory of man's handiwork in the city, consider awhile the handiwork of God in the flat country surrounding it. Let him go forth into the forest of Winendael, or the woods of Tilleghem or Maele, and he will see what he will see. CHAPTER XIII _The French Annexation_