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There were meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars, white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and columbine, white violets in the swampy places and once in a while an early wild rose.
"Guess you leetle cunnin's better hurry up," he said, while he poured out the nuts on the ground, his knees sticking up as he sat, like some huge grasshopper's. "Guess ye ain't got more 'n time to fill yer cubbud, winter's a-comin'! Them leetle birches on Bog-eddy is turnin' yeller, that's the fust sign.
This establishment, which bore the somewhat suggestive name of "The Birches," was owned and presided over by Mr. Welsby, who, with an unmarried daughter, Miss Eleanor, acting as housekeeper, and his nephew, Mr. Blake, performing the duties of assistant-master, undertook the preliminary education of about a dozen juveniles whose ages ranged between ten and fourteen.
This was no doubt why she remembered that the impatient team would probably move on if she left the sleigh, and therefore drove the horses to the first of the birches before she got down. Then she knotted the reins about a branch, and called out sharply.
When he was by himself, his pleasures were almost vegetable. He would slip into the woods towards Achères, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches. His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think; sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs against the sky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a spirit wholly abstracted.
I escaped from the river, that first night, and took to the woods, and profited by the change. In the woods I was at home again, and the bed of hemlock boughs salved my spirits. A cold spring run came down off the mountain, and beside it, underneath birches and hemlocks, I improvised my hearthstone.
I now found myself gradually edging down the side of the mountain, keeping around it in a spiral manner, and scanning the woods and the shape of the ground for some encouraging hint or sign. Finally the woods became more open, and the descent less rapid. The trees were remarkably straight and uniform in size. Black birches, the first I had ever seen, were very numerous. I felt encouraged.
Lanse, his eyes mischievous, passed a whispered word among the musicians, and presently, at the signal, the well-known notes of "Hail to the Chief" were sounding through the woods, played with great spirit and zest. And as they played, the five Birches marched to position in front of the captain, then stood still and saluted. "Off with you, you strolling players!" cried the captain.
Further in at the left was tiarella, with its darling leaf, and along under the yellow birches the lady's slipper he had transplanted, year after year, and that finally took root and showed a fine sturdiness he had never seen exceeded elsewhere.
The desired water was not in view yet; but the bog gave way to fairer, firmer ground, covered with waving grasses, studded with rising knolls, and having no timber growth, save stray clumps of birches and hemlocks, several hundred yards apart. "Now, this is jolly!" exclaimed Dol. "This looks a little bit like an English lawn, only I'm afraid it's not a likely place for moose-tracks.
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