and drawing up his materials, by the help of Harry, with a piece of string, Hugh in a very little while had a level floor, four feet square, in the heart of the oak tree, quite invisible from below —­ buried in a cloud of green leaves.  For greater safety, he fastened ropes as handrails all around it from one branch to another.  And now nothing remained but to construct a bench to sit on, and such a stair as Harry could easily climb.  The boy was quite restless with anxiety to get up and see the nest; and kept calling out constantly to know if he might not come up yet.  At length Hugh allowed him to try; but the poor boy was not half strong enough to climb the tree without help.  So Hugh descended, and with his aid Harry was soon standing on the new-built platform.

“I feel just like an eagle,” he cried; but here his voice faltered, and he was silent.

“What is the matter, Harry?” said his tutor.

“Oh, nothing,” replied he; “only I didn’t exactly know whereabouts we were till I got up here.”

“Whereabouts are we, then?”

“Close to the end of the Ghost’s Walk.”

“But you don’t mind that now, surely, Harry?”

“No, sir; that is, not so much as I used.”

“Shall I take all this down again, and build our nest somewhere else?”

“Oh, no, if you don’t think it matters.  It would be a great pity, after you have taken so much trouble with it.  Besides, I shall never be here without you; and I do not think I should be afraid of the ghost herself, if you were with me.”

Yet Harry shuddered involuntarily at the thought of his own daring speech.

“Very well, Harry, my boy; we will finish it here.  Now, if you stand there, I will fasten a plank across here between these two stumps—­no, that won’t do exactly.  I must put a piece on to this one, to raise it to a level with the other—­then we shall have a seat in a few minutes.”

Hammer and nails were busy again; and in a few minutes they sat down to enjoy the “soft pipling cold” which swung all the leaves about like little trap-doors that opened into the Infinite.  Harry was highly contented.  He drew a deep breath of satisfaction as, looking above and beneath and all about him, he saw that they were folded in an almost impenetrable net of foliage, through which nothing could steal into their sanctuary, save “the chartered libertine, the air,” and a few stray beams of the setting sun, filtering through the multitudinous leaves, from which they caught a green tint as they passed.

“Fancy yourself a fish,” said Hugh, “in the depth of a cavern of sea weed, which floats about in the slow swinging motion of the heavy waters.”

“What a funny notion!”

“Not so absurd as you may think, Harry; for just as some fishes crawl about on the bottom of the sea, so do we men at the bottom of an ocean of air; which, if it be a thinner one, is certainly a deeper one.”