The people would have noticed the giant ash tree at the center of the wood, and then, in time, they'd have noticed the little spring bubbling up among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to conceal it. If they had made their road through the wood instead of around it, then the people would have followed the road. In the end, however, it was the cows who were responsible for the wood's isolation, and the cows, through some wisdom they were not wise enough to know that they possessed, were very wise indeed. Nothing ever seems interesting when it belongs to you-only when it doesn't.ДЄnd what is interesting, anyway, about a slim few acres of trees? There will be a dimness shot through with bars of sunlight, a great many squirrels and birds, a deep, damp mattress of leaves on the ground, and all the other things just as familiar if not so pleasant-things like spiders, thorns, and grubs. Winnie, the only child of the house, never went there, though she sometimes stood inside the fence, carelessly banging a stick against the iron bars, and looked at it. In any case, the wood, being on top-except, of course, for its roots-was owned bud and bough by the Fosters in the touch-me-not cottage, and if they never went there, if they never wandered in among the trees, well, that was their affair. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing? The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. And anyway, for the people, there was another reason to leave the wood to itself: it belonged to the Fosters, the owners of the touch-me-not cottage, and was therefore private property in spite of the fact that it lay outside the fence and was perfectly accessible. But for the most part the people followed the road around the wood because that was the way it led. Whether the people felt that way about the wood or not is difficult to say. This, at least, is what the cows must have thought: 'Let it keep its peace we won't disturb it.' But the wood had a sleeping, otherworld appearance that made you want to speak in whispers. The house was so proud of itself that you wanted to make a lot of noise as you passed, and maybe even throw a rock or two.

If the look of the first house suggested that you'd better pass it by, so did the look of the wood, but for quite a different reason.

There was something strange about the wood. The first house only is important the first house, the road, and the wood. But the village doesn't matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows. On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, 'Move on-we don't want you here.' So the road went humbly by and made its way, past cottages more and more frequent but less and less forbidding, into the village.

And all at once the sun was uncomfortably hot, the dust oppressive, and the meager grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn.

It became, instead, and rather abruptly, the property of people. On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness dissolved. But on reaching the shadows of the first trees, it veered sharply, swung out in a wide arc as if, for the first time, it had reason to think where it was going, and passed around. And then it went on again and came at last to the wood. It widened and seemed to pause, suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of the infinite. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow. The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed.

The everlasting book of the unliving