ly if the sap
was not gone down at the time of cutting. Therefore we always find it
needful to have plenty still in stock.

It was very pleasant there in the copse, sloping to the west as it was,
and the sun descending brightly, with rocks and banks to dwell upon. The
stems of mottled and dimpled wood, with twigs coming out like elbows,
hung and clung together closely, with a mode of bending in, as children
do at some danger; overhead the shrunken leaves quivered and rustled
ripely, having many points like stars, and rising and falling
delicately, as fingers play sad music. Along the bed of the slanting
ground, all between the stools of wood, there were heaps of dead brown
leaves, and sheltered mats of lichen, and drifts of spotted stick gone
rotten, and tufts of rushes here and there, full of fray and feathering.

All by the hedge ran a little stream, a thing that could barely name
itself, flowing scarce more than a pint in a minute, because of the
sunny weather. Yet had this rill little crooks and crannies dark and
bravely bearded, and a gallant rush through a reeden pipe--the stem of
a flag that was grounded; and here and there divided threads, from the
points of a branching stick, into mighty pools of rock (as large as a
grown man's hat almost) napped with moss all around the sides and hung
with corded grasses. Along and down the tiny banks, and nodding into one
another, even across main channel, hung the brown arcade of ferns; some
with gold tongues languishing; some with countless ear-drops jerking,
some with great quilled ribs uprising and long saws aflapping; others
cupped, and fanning over with the grace of yielding, even as a hollow
fountain spread by winds that have lost their way.

Deeply each beyond other, pluming, stooping, glancing, glistening,
weaving softest pillow lace, coying to the wind and water, when their
fleeting image danced, or by which their beauty moved,--God has made no
lovelier thing; and only He takes heed of them.

It was time to go home to supper now, and I felt very friendly towards
it, having been hard at work for some hours, with only the voice of the
little rill, and some hares and a pheasant for company. The sun was gone
down behind the black wood on the farther cliffs of Bagworthy, and the
russet of the tufts and spear-beds was becoming gray, while the greyness
of the sapling ash grew brown against the sky; the hollow curves of
the little stream became black beneath the grasses