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 THE MURMURING FOREST

A LEGEND OF THE POLYESIE

forest was murmuring.

There was always a murmuring in this forest, long- drawn, monotonous, like the undertones of a distant bell, like a faint song without words, like vague memories of the past. There was always a murmur- ing in the forest because it was a dense wood of an- cient pines, untouched as yet by the axe and saw of the timber merchant. The tall, century-old trees with their mighty red-brown trunks stood in frown- ing ranks, proudly thrusting their green, inter- woven tops aloft. The air under them was still ancl sweet with resin; bright ferns pierced the carpet of needles with which the ground was clothed, and su- perbly displayed their motionless, fringed foliage. Tall, green grass-blades had shot upward in the moist places, and there, too, white clover-heads drooped heavily, as if overcome with gentle languor. And always overhead, without a pause and without an end, droned the voice of the forest, the low sighing of the ancient pines.

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