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Between the hills lie high level-looking plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze. The hill surface is streaked with ash drift and black, unweathered lava flows. After rains water accumulates in the hollows of small closed valleys, and, evaporating, leaves hard dry levels of pure desertness that get the local name of dry lakes.
There were not many such places as this old ruin that did not yield up their treasures to Pee-wee. The veriest ash heap became a place of romance under his prying hand and inquisitive eye. This find was just one of those ordinary oilskin wallets which had held and protected many letters from mothers and sweethearts and which had been shot through and through in the trenches in France.
The glen here is almost entirely choked up with tea-trees, and we had to cut great quantities of wood away so as to approach the water easily. The tea-tree is the only timber here for firewood; many trees are of some size, being seven or eight inches through, but mostly very crooked and gnarled. The green wood appears to burn almost as well as the dead, and forms good ash for baking dampers.
Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer.
The root of an ash tree, on the bank which bends round the little bay, had been half bared by the waters during one of the winter floods, and afforded a commodious resting-place, whereon I took my seat, at once basking in the sun and bathing, as it were, in the vernal breeze.
They retired, the Lady Winifred and her daughter Edith, to the summit of the solitary tower, which arose over the entrance gate of the hall; there, with eyes fast filling with tears, they watched the departing band as it entered into the forest, then gorgeous with all the tints of autumn, the golden tints of the ash and elm, the reddish-brown of the beech all combining to make a picture, exceeding even the tender hues of spring in beauty.
No path leads through its quiet recesses, where ash and elm and larch and spruce, mostly self-sown, are mingled together, with a thick growth of elder spread beneath them. It was here, in an ancient, disused quarry, that the keeper pointed out not long since the secret dwelling-house of the kingfishers.
The coarse, angular, unyielding twigs of the oaks give deep tones like the vibrations of the thick strings on the big double bass. The opposite, widespreading twigs of the ash sing like the cello, and the tones of the alternate spray of the lindens are finer, like the viola.
Bruce leant back in his seat, and flicked the ash off his cigar. "He's the manager of the new Land and Trading Company here a little, pretty-faced fellow, with a yellow moustache, curly hair, and as much principle in him as a damned rat. He has the command of any amount of money, and the women here think no end of him.
A light broke on Coke's intelligence that irradiated his prominent eyes. His heavy lips relaxed into a cunning grin, and he flicked the ash off the end of the cigar with a confidential nod. "Oh, is that it?" he said. "Artful old dog, Verity! But why in why didn't 'e tell me you was comin' aboard this trip?
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