The Tale of the Peacock Trees
made her feel him to be dangerous, and perhaps unscrupulous. She changed the subject sharply, not without a movement toward gratifying her own curiosity.
"What did you mean by all that about walking trees?" she asked. "Don't tell me you really believe in a magic tree that eats birds!"
"I should probably surprise you," said Treherne gravely, "more by what I don't believe than by what I do."
Then, after a pause, he made a general gesture toward the house and garden. "I'm afraid I don't believe in all this; for instance, in Elizabethan houses and Elizabethan families and the way estates have been improved, and the rest of it. Look at our friend the woodcutter now." And he pointed to the man with the quaint black beard, who was still plying his ax upon the timber below.
"That man's family goes back for ages, and it was far richer and freer in what you call the Dark Ages than it is now. Wait till the Cornish peasant writes a history of Cornwall."
"But what in the world," she demanded, "has this to do with whether you believe in a tree eating birds?"
"Why should I confess what I believe in?" he said, a muffled drum of mutiny in his voice. "The gentry came here and took our land and took our labor and took our customs. And now, after
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