flat
meadows and smooth round sides of the Downs were not greener in June;
nor in that crystal air did the river ever run bluer than under that
blue sky. The elms were getting already their dusky gold and the
beeches their brighter reds and golds and coppers; where they were
young and in thin leaf the sun-flood watered them to transparent pinks
and lemons, as bright, though not as burning, as the massed colors of
the older trees. That day there was magic on the western hills, for
those who could see it, and trees that were not trees.

So Rosalind who, like all the world, was early abroad, though not with
all the world, saw a silver cloud pretending to be white flowers upon a
hawthorn; never in spring sunlight had the bush shone whiter. But when
Maudlin rode by later she saw, not a cloud in flower, but a flowerless
tree, dressed with the new-puffed whiteness of wild clematis, its
silver-green tendrils shining through their own mist.

Then Rosalind saw a sunset pretending to be a spindle-tree, scattering
flecks of red and yellow light upon the ground, till the grass threw up
a reflection of the tree, as a cloud in the east will reflect another
in the west. But when Maudlin came riding the spots of light upon the
ground were little pointed leaves, and the sunset a little tree as
round as a clipped yew, mottled like an artist's palette with every
shade from primrose to orange and from rose to crimson.

And last, in a green glade under a steep hollow overhung with ash,
Rosalind saw a fairy pretending to be a silver birch turned golden. For
her leaves hung like the shaking water of a sunlit fountain, and she
stood alone in the very middle of the glade as though on tip-toe for a
dance; and all the green trees that had retreated from her
dancing-floor seemed ready to break into music, so that Rosalind held
her breath lest she should shatter the moment and the magic, and stayed
spell-bound where she was. But an hour afterwards Maudlin, riding the
chalky ledge on the ash-grown height, looked down on that same sight
and uttered a sharp cry; for she saw, no fairy, but a little yellowing
birch, and under it the snow-white hart with the Rusty Knight beside
him. Then all the company with her echoed the cry, and the forest was
filled with the round sounds of horns and belling hounds. And while in
great excitement men sought a way down into the steep glen, the hart
and his ragged guard had started up, and vanished through the
underw