A Childs Book of Saints | Page 2

showing well above the green huddle of the Forest.
"It is a pretty big church, isn't it, father?" she asked, as she pointed it
out to me.
It was a most picturesque old-fashioned church, though in my
thoughtlessness I had mistaken it for a beech and a tall poplar growing
apparently side by side; but the moment she spoke I perceived my
illusion.
"I expect, if we were anywhere about on a Sunday morning," she
surmised, with a laugh, "we should see hundreds and hundreds of
Oak-girls and Oak-boys going in schools to service."
"Dressed in green silk, with bronze boots and pink feathers--the colours
of the new oak-leaves, eh?"
"Oh, father, it would be lovely!" in a burst of ecstasy. "Oughtn't we to
go and find the way to their church?"
We might do something much less amusing. Accordingly we took the
bearings of the green spire with the skill of veteran explorers. It lay due
north, so that if we travelled by the way of the North Star we should be
certain to find it. Wheeling the Man before us, we made a North Star
track for ourselves through the underwood and over last year's rustling
beech-leaves, till Guy ceased babbling and crooning, and dropped into
a slumber, as he soon does in the fresh of the morning. Then we had to
go slowly for fear he should be wakened by the noise of the dead wood
underfoot, for, as we passed over it with wheels and boots, it snapped

and crackled like a freshly-kindled fire. It was a relief to get at last to
the soft matting of brown needles and cones under the Needle-trees, for
there we could go pretty quickly without either jolting him or making a
racket.
We went as far as we were able that day, and we searched in glade and
lawn, in coppice and dingle, but never a trace could we find of the
sylvan minster where the Oak-people worship. As we wandered
through the Forest we came upon a number of notice boards nailed high
up on the trunks of various trees, but when W. V. discovered that these
only repeated the same stern legend: "Caution. Persons breaking,
climbing upon, or otherwise damaging," she indignantly resented this
incessant intrusion on the innocent enjoyment of free foresters. How
much nicer it would have been if there had been a hand on one of these
repressive boards, with the inscription: "This way to the North Star
Church;" or, if a caution was really necessary for some of the people
who entered the Forest, to say: "The public are requested not to disturb
the Elves, Birch-ladies, and Oak-men;" but of course the most
delightful thing would be to have a different fairy-tale written up in
clear letters on each of the boards, and a seat close by where one could
rest and read it comfortably.
I told her there were several forests I had explored, in which something
like that was really done; only the stories were not fairy-tales, but
legends of holy men and women; and among the branches of the trees
were fixed most beautifully coloured glass pictures of those holy
people, who had all lived and died, and some of whom had been buried,
in those forests, hundreds of years ago. Most of the forests were very
ancient--older than the thrones of many kingdoms; and men lived and
delighted in them long before Columbus sailed into unknown seas to
discover America. Many, indeed, had been blown down and destroyed
by a terrible storm which swept over the world when Henry VIII. ruled
in England, and only wrecks of them now remained for any one to see,
but others, which had survived the wild weather of those days, were as
wonderful and as lovely as a dream. The tall trees in them sent out
curving branches which interlaced high overhead, shutting out the blue
sky and making a sweet and solemn dimness, and nearly all the light

that streamed in between the fair round trunks and the arching boughs
was like that of a splendid sunset, only it was there all day long and
never faded out till night fell. And in some of the forests there were
great magical roses, of a hundred brilliant colours crowded together,
and as big as the biggest cart-wheel, or bigger.
These woods were places of happy quietude and comfort and gladness
of heart; but, instead of Oak-men, there were many Angels.
Here and there, too, in the silent avenues, mighty warriors and saintly
abbots, and statesmen bishops, and it might be even a king or a queen,
had been buried; and over their graves there were sometimes images of
them lying carved in marble or alabaster, and sometimes there had been
built the loveliest little chapels