"Another life gone," said the old woman, Nya, flitting before them like a
little grey ghost, every time that this weird sound struck upon their
ears; "whose was it, I wonder? I will look in my bowl, I will look in my
bowl."
For, as Rachel discovered afterwards, these people believed that the
spirit of each tree of the forest is attached to the spirit of a human
being, although that being may dwell in other lands, far away, which dies
when the tree dies, sometimes slowly by disease, and sometimes in swift
collapse, so that they pass together into the world of ghosts.
On they flitted through the gloom, on for mile after mile. Although the
leaf-strewn ground showed no traces of it, evidently they were following
some kind of path, for no fallen trunks barred their progress, nor were
there any creepers or brushwood, although to right and left of them all
these could be seen in plenty. At last, quite of a sudden, for the bole of
a tree at the end of the path had hidden it from them, they came upon a
clearing in the forest. It seemed to be a natural, or, at any rate, a very
ancient clearing, since in it no stumps were visible, nor any scrub, or
creepers, only tall grass and flowering plants. In the centre of this
place, covering a quarter of it, perhaps, was a vast circular wall, fifty
feet or more in height, and clothed with ferns.
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