accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or
the miracle of its continuous body. Pan once played upon
their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he
still plays upon these later generations down all the
valley of the Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet
and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and the terror
of the world.

The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with
tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it
was strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy
underneath the willows. But the reeds had to stand
where they were; and those who stand still are always
timid advisers.

*

The wholeday was showery, with occasional drenching plumps.
We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the
sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm
intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting the
forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place
most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along
the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and
piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a
forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and
innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves
are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so
much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of