university life, my half forgotten student days,
returned in thought. I began to think about
my cousin Theodore, with a dreary but intense
interest in a thousand fantastic speculations as
to his unknown fate. Poor fellow! I had not
seen him for years; and, in any other state of
mind than that which I now experienced, I
should have implicitly credited the universal
opinion that he was dead. We had been friends
at the university. He had acquired, I know not
how, amongst his fellow-students a reputation
for ability, which his extreme eccentricity rather
stimulated than justified. He was studious, but
all his studies were of the most useless and
unpractical. He spent extravagant sums of money
in the purchase of books which, when he had
once read, he thrust into the stove, and which
any other man would have burnt without reading.
He never issued out of the house till the
rest of the world withdrew into it. Then, about
twilight, he was sometimes to be seen prowling
among swamps and solitary places, and
running eagerly after moths and those insects
which, like himself, issued forth only at
twilight. His only constant companion was an old
violin. He would pass the greater part of each
day in extracting from this instrument of torture
the most excruciating sounds that ever afflicted
mortal ears, and became the nuisance of all
his neighbours. He affected to despise all the
learning that was cultivated at the university;
and, when he went up for his degree, his answers
were so extravagant, and his papers so
unintelligible, that it was ignominiously refused to
him. This seemed to prey on his spirits, and
disorder his intellect. For it was soon noticed
that his conduct became more extravagant than
ever. There was in the neighbourhood of
the university a small lake, which was so
surrounded with mountains that it could only be
reached on foot, and even thus with difficulty.
Here it is believed that he used to pass, in
complete solitude, the greater part of his days, and
often the entire nights. When questioned, he
spoke very wildly, declaring that he was about
to espouse a princess of vast possessions and
indescribable beauty, with what other ridiculous
and incredible assertions I know not. One
evening, I was impelled by curiosity to follow
him to this lake. I found him standing
on the shore of it, and listening with apparent
rapture to a troop of frogs that were croaking
horribly. This, he assured me, with great gravity,
was a chorus of students who were singing a
sublime evening hymn to Nature. He added,
that they were members of a university which
had been founded in times of the most remote
antiquity, underneath the waters of this lake,
where there was also a magnificent library, of
which all the books were written upon silver,
and that he had already matriculated at this seat
of learning. He was very angry when I
remonstrated with him upon the incoherence and
absurdity of this discourse. Soon afterwards he
disappeared, and was never more seen nor heard
of. It was generally believed, though the body
could not be found, that he had drowned himself.

I was absorbed in the most extravagant
speculations as to the possible fate of
Theodore, when I found myself on the skirt of the
forest, and just in front of my old friend, the
Sentinel Oak. I called this tree the Sentinel Oak,
because it was always the first object that
attracted my attention in the wood, to which I
had of late become a daily and a lonely visitor.
It stood in the van of the vast hosts of the
woodland, and was the tallest, and, seemingly, the
oldest tree of the forest. But, as I now
glanced at my old friend, I could not but
notice the dreary and dejected change in his
appearance. The leaves, with a grey and
haggard hue, hung flat and listless from the
drooping boughs. There was an indescribable look
of suppressed pain and injured pride throughout
the whole tree. As I passed under the
great branch which had long over-roofed with
a rich baldachin of verdure the only pathway to
the interior of the forest—forming a sort of
triumphal arch to the issue of the chariots of the
wind—I found myself, for the first time, compelled
to stoop my head. When I had done so, the whole
branch fell to the ground with a loud crash.

As I turned, startled by the sudden fall of this
mighty limb (by which, had I passed under it
but a moment later, I had surely been felled to
the earth), something swiftly rustled past me
out of the quivering leaves, and slipped with an
angry snapping sound into the neighbouring
underwood. Something which I cannot describe.
Something small, with large bright eyes, and a
glance of concentrated scorn and sorrow. What
was it? Probably nothing. If anything at
all, it must have been some forest creature
suddenly dislodged from its customary haunt in
that ruin of writhing leaves and twigs over
which I now bent; and my own morbid indignation
at the injury inflicted on my poor old friend
of the forest had read in the scared eye of some
terrified reptile what appeared to be the protest
of resentful Nature. For I now saw, scored in
white upon the broad brown bark of the
dismembered oak, the fatal cross of its destiny. I
remembered that the wiseacres of our
commune had doomed the whole woodland to slow
destruction; that soon the tall pines and stately
firs would be chained together like felons, and
sent in doomed dozens to the neighbouring
seaport, while the humble underwood would be
stacked in fagots for my neighbour's hearth.
Already the verdict was gone forth! And
the woodman had left his saw in the limbs
of my lost favourite. Mentally cursing man,
the universal destroyer, I plunged into the
depth of the forest, and traversed with bitter
thoughts and heedless steps the tangled labyrinth
that thickened round me. Perhaps I should not
have paused in my unconscious rambles to admire
the excessive beauty of the solitude, had I not
been suddenly almost overpowered by a flood of
fragrance so intense as to make me curious to