into the
plantation on the other side. Here the ground was white in patches
with anemones; and as his feet crushed them, descending, the babel of
the birds grew louder and louder.

He issued on a small clearing by the edge of the brook, where the
grass was a delicate green, each blade pushing up straight as a
spear-point from the crumbled earth. Here were more anemones, between
patches of last year's bracken, and on the further slope a mass of
daffodils. He pulled out a pocket-knife that had sharpened some
hundreds of quill pens, and looking to his right, found what he wanted
at once.

It was a sycamore, on which the buds were swelling. He cut a small
twig, as big round as his middle finger, and sitting himself down on a
barked log, close by, began to measure and cut it to a span's length,
avoiding all knots. Then, taking the knife by the blade between finger
and thumb, he tapped the bark gently with the tortoise-shell handle.
And as he tapped, his face went back to boyhood again, in spite of the
side-whiskers, and his mouth was pursed up to a silent tune.

For ten minutes the tapping continued; the birds ceased their
contention, and broke out restlessly at intervals. A rabbit across
the brook paused and listened at the funnel-shaped mouth of his hole,
which caught the sound and redoubled it.

"Confound these boots!" said the Registrar, and pulling them off,
tossed them among the primroses. They were "elastic-sides."

The tapping ceased. A breath of the land-ward breeze came up, combing
out the tangle that winter had made in the grass, caught the brook on
the edge of a tiny fall, and puffed it back six inches in a spray of
small diamonds. It quickened the whole copse. The oak-saplings rubbed
their old leaves one on another, as folks rub their hands, feeling
life and warmth; the chestnut-buds groped like an infant's fingers;
and the chorus broke out again, the thrush leading--"_Tiurru, tiurru,
chippewee; tio-tee, tio-tee; queen, queen, que-een_!"

In a moment or two he broke off suddenly, and a honey-bee shot out
of an anemone-bell like a shell from a mortar. For a new sound
disconcerted them--a sound sharp and piercing. The Registrar had
finished his whistle and was blowing like mad, moving his fingers
up and down. Having proved his instrument, he dived a hand into his
tail-pocket and drew out a roll, tied around with ribbon. It was the
folded leather-bound volume in which he kept his blank certificates.
And spr