240 WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND, [v.

woods as are not to be met with every day. They
were full of trees of enormous size and of unknown
age. Many of them had been pollarded, and so from
their crown sprang up sundry branches, each of which
was a small tree in itself, overshadowing the ground
far and wide on either side. These trees were princi-
pally hornbeam, beech, and ash, but a goodly sprink-
ling of oaks was intermixed with the others. As
spring advanced, these woods presented to the eye
a perfect carpet of blue-bells and other woodland
flowers, most pleasant to behold‘in their fresh beauty
and the variety of their colouring. Then gradually
the fern grew up and covered the greater part of the
earth within the precincts of the wood, where its green
contrasted with that of the leaves, above it, and the
eye rested gratefully upon the beauty of both. What
could be more delightful than to wander through such
woods in the height of.summer? At some places the
fern was higher than the head of an ordinary-sized
man, and as the overhanging branches of the trees,
drooping with their pondetous load of leaves, touched
its uprearing crest, it was not easy to make a passage
through it. At other spots it was thinner, and anyone
who knew the woods well could wind about in the
tracks made by the deer, and enjoy an exceedingly
beautiful and wild walk without keeping to the bridle
road which ran through each of the woods.

It was indeed a glorious place. Now and then a
startled doe, with her fawn by his side, would start,
from her lair in the fern, give half-a-dozen jumps with
her feet together, as if moved’ by mechanism, stand
staring at you with doubtful eyes for a moment or