and lunched with the dreaded grandmother or the stiff and fashionable aunts.
And when they came down again from these perilous heights, the scents of the earth rose to meet them, the perfume of woods and fields, and the smells of the open country.
There was, too, the delight, the curious delight of windy nights, when the wind smote and buffeted them, knocking them suddenly sideways, whistling through their feathers as if it wanted to tear them from their sockets; rushing furiously up underneath their wings with repeated blows; turning them round, and backwards and forwards, washing them from head to foot in a tempestuous sea of rapid and unexpected motion.
It was, of course, far easier to fly with a wind than without one. The difficulty with a violent wind was to get down—not to keep up. The gusts drove up against the under-surfaces of their wings and kept them afloat, so that by merely spreading them like sails they could sweep and circle without a single stroke. Jimbo soon learned to manœuvre so that he could turn the strength of a great wind to his own purposes, and revel in its boisterous waves and currents like a strong swimmer in a rough sea.
And to listen to the wind as it swept backwards and forwards over the surface of the earth below was another pleasure; for everything it touched gave out a definite note. He soon got to know the long sad cry from the willows, and the little whispering in the tops of the poplar trees; the crisp, silvery rattle of the birches, and the deep roar from oaks and beech woods. The sound of a forest was like the shouting of the sea.
But far more lovely, when they descended a little, and the wind was more gentle, were the low pipings among the reeds and the little wayward murmurs under the hedgerows.
The pine trees, however, drew them most, with their weird voices, now far away, now near, rising upwards with a wind of sighs.
There was a grove of these trees that trooped down to the waters of a little lake in the hills, and to this spot they often flew when the wind was low and the music likely, therefore, to be to their taste. For, even when there was no perceptible wind, these trees seemed always full of mysterious, mournful whisperings; their branches held soft music that never quite died away, even when all other trees were silent and motionless.
Besides these special expeditions, they flew everywhere and anywhere. They visited the birds in their nests in lofty trees, and exchanged the time of night with wise-eyed owls staring out upon them from the ivy. They hovered up the face of great cliffs, and passed the hawks asleep on perilous ledges; skimmed over lonely marshes, frightening the water-birds paddling in and out among the reeds. They followed the windings of streams, singing among the meadows, and flew along the wet sands as they watched the moon rise out of the sea.
These flights were unadulterated pleasure, and Jimbo thought he could never have enough of them.
He soon began to notice, too, that the trees emanated something that affected his own condition. When he sat in their branches this was very noticeable. Currents of force passed from them into himself. And even when he flew over their crests he was aware that some woods exhaled vigorous, life-giving forces, while others tired and depleted him. Nothing was visible actually, but fine waves seemed to beat up against his eyes and thoughts, making him stronger or weaker, happy or melancholy, full of hope and courage, or listless and indifferent.
These emanations of the trees—this giving-forth of their own personal forces—were, of course, very varied in strength and character. Oaks and pines were the best combination, he found, before the stress of a long flight, the former giving him steadiness, and the latter steely endurance and the power to steer in sinuous, swift curves, without taking thought or trouble.
Other trees gave other powers. All gave something. It was impossible to sit among their branches without absorbing some of the subtle and exhilarating tree-life. He soon learned how to gather it all into himself, and turn it to account in his own being.
"Sit quietly," the governess said. "Let the forces creep in and stir about. Do nothing yourself. Give them time to become part of yourself and mix properly with your own currents. Effort on your part prevents this, and you weaken them without gaining anything yourself."
Jimbo made all sorts of experiments with trees and rocks and water and fields, learning gradually the different qualities of force they gave forth, and how to use them for himself. Nothing, he found, was really dead. And sometimes he got himself into strange difficulties in the beginning of his attempts to master and absorb these nature-forces.
"Remember," the governess warned him more than once, when he was inclined to play tricks, "they are in quite a different world to ours. You cannot take liberties with them. Even a sympathetic soul like yourself only touches the fringe of their world. You exchange surface-messages with them, nothing more. Some trees have terrible forces just below the surface. They could extinguish you altogether—absorb you into themselves. Others are naturally hostile. Some are mere tricksters. Others are shifty and treacherous, like the hollies, that move about too much. The oak and the pine and the elm are friendly, and you can always trust them absolutely. But there are others——!"
She held up a warning finger, and Jimbo's eyes nearly dropped out of his head.
"No," she added, in reply to his questions, "you can't learn all this at once. Perhaps——" She hesitated a little. "Perhaps, if you don't escape, we should have time for all manner of adventures among the trees and other things—but then, we are going to escape, so there's no good wasting time over that!"
CHAPTER XIV
AN ADVENTURE
But Miss Lake did not always accompany him on these excursions into the night; sometimes he took long flights by himself, and she rather encouraged him in this, saying it would give him confidence in case he ever lost her and was obliged to find his way about alone.
"But I couldn't get really lost," he said once to her. "I know the winds perfectly now and the country round for miles, and I never go out in fog——"
"But these are only practice flights," she replied. "The flight of escape is a very different matter. I want you to learn all you possibly can so as to be prepared for anything."
Jimbo felt vaguely uncomfortable when she talked like this.
"But you'll be with me in the Escape Flight—the final one of all," he said; "and nothing ever goes wrong when you're with me."
"I should like to be always with you," she answered tenderly, "but it's well to be prepared for anything, just the same."
And more than this the boy could never get out of her.
On one of these lonely flights, however, he made the unpleasant discovery that he was being followed.
At first he only imagined there was somebody after him because of the curious vibrations of the very rarefied air in which he flew. Every time his flight slackened and the noise of his own wings grew less, there reached him from some other corner of the sky a sound like the vibrations of large wings beating the air. It seemed behind, and generally below him, but the swishing of his own feathers made it difficult to hear with distinctness, or to be certain of the direction.
Evidently it was a long way off; but now and again, when he took a spurt and then sailed silently for several minutes on outstretched wings, the beating of distant, following feathers seemed unmistakably clear, and he raced
