stem of the very oak we had been looking for.

"This is it," she said, and turned and pointed to the hollow. "Where's
Ellen?"

"Here, Ellen," I called, "here--_we've_ found it!"

Then Ellen came scampering through the wood; and first I climbed into
the hollow and curled up to see what sort of a night I might have of it,
and then I climbed out and Ellen climbed in--and then both in at once,
and we kept house for a while and gave a couple of dinners and tea
parties. And then quarreled about the probable size of Friar Tuck, and
Ellen drew the line at further imaginings and left me alone in
the hollow.

This extended all the way up the main trunk and all but out through the
top. Here and there it pierced through the outer bark, so that slants of
pale light served to carry the eye up and up until it became lost in
inky blackness. Now and then dust and little showers of dry rot
descended softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close
to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone,
things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze
puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel
scampering and a woodpecker at work--or so I guessed, though it sounded
more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow,
but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too
far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and,
furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the whole tree and bring down
whole smarting showers of dust and dry rot and even good-sized
fragments. I got up a few feet, lost my hold, and fell into the soft,