The baroness did not exaggerate; the tree was far older than even this
ancient family. They possessed among other archives a manuscript written
by a monk, a son of the house, about four hundred years before our
story, and containing many of the oral traditions about this tree that
had come down to him from remote antiquity. According to this authority,
the first Baron of Beaurepaire had pitched his tent under a fair
oak-tree that stood prope rivum, near a brook. His grandson built a
square tower hard by, and dug a moat that enclosed both tree and tower,
and received the waters of the brook aforesaid.
At this time the tree seems only to have been remarked for its height.
But, a century and a half before the monk wrote, it had become famous in
all the district for its girth, and in the monk's own day had ceased
to grow; but not begun to decay. The mutilated arm I have mentioned
was once a long sturdy bough, worn smooth as velvet in one part from
a curious cause: it ran about as high above the ground as a full-sized
horse, and the knights and squires used to be forever vaulting upon
it, the former in armor; the monk, when a boy, had seen them do it a
thousand times.
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