After The Fawns Had Disappeared, The Squire Went On And Entered Under The
Beeches From Which They Had Emerged.
He had not gone far before he struck
and followed a path which wound between the beech trunks and was entirely
arched over by their branches.
Squirrels raced away at the sound of his
footsteps, darting over the ground and up the stems of the trees in an
instant. A slight rustling now and then showed that a rabbit had been
startled. Pheasants ran too, but noiselessly, and pigeons rose from the
boughs above. The wood-pigeons rose indeed, but they were not much
frightened, and quickly settled again. So little shot at, they felt safe,
and only moved from habit.
He crossed several paths leading in various directions, but went on,
gradually descending till the gable end of a farmhouse became visible
through the foliage. The old red tiles were but a few yards distant from
the boughs of the last beech, and there was nothing between the house and
the forest but a shallow trench almost filled with dead brown leaves and
edged with fern. Out from that trench, sometimes stealthily slipping
between the flattened fern-stalks, came a weasel, and, running through
the plantains and fringe-like mayweed or stray pimpernel which covered
the neglected ground, made for the straw-rick. Searching about for mice,
he was certain to come across a hen's egg in some corner, perhaps in a
hay-crib, which the cattle, now being in the meadow, did not use.
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