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Here was an open grove, with a floor of turf; over this green carpet, among the white trunks of the birches, under the canopy of luxuriant drooping boughs, roamed a multitude of forms, whose strange dance-like motions and strange costumes made one think them ghosts, wandering by the light of the moon.
There was Deacon Lysander's house, where little Rias Richardson lived now; and on that slope and hidden in its forest nook, among the birches and briers, the little schoolhouse where Cynthia had learned to spell; here, where the road made an aisle in the woods, she had met Jethro.
Even then his cunning did not desert him, and flinging the Marlin down beside the trooper, he slipped almost silently in and out among the birches and swung himself into the saddle of a tethered horse.
The Assyrian kings cut timber frequently in this tract; and here are found at the present day enormous planes, thick forests of oak, pine, and ilex, walnuts, willows, poplars, ash-trees, birches, larches, and the carob or locust tree.
It was very dark amid the birches where Trooper Shannon sat motionless in his saddle gazing down into the denser blackness of the river hollow. The stream ran deep below the level of the prairie, as the rivers of that country usually do, and the trees which there alone found shelter from the winds straggled, gnarled and stunted, up either side of the steep declivity.
It lies north-west from the shores of Hudson's Bay, extending nearly to the Mackenzie River. Its rocks are primitive. It is a land of hills and valleys, of deep dark lakes and sharp-running streams. It is a woodless region. No timber is found there that deserves the name. No trees but glandular dwarf birches, willows, and black spruce, small and stunted. Even these only grow in isolated valleys.
Even in winter it was a sheltered and snugly sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of spring, the earth sending forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs spreading their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches, which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first mutual avowal of affection.
There was nice work with interarching birches among the other trees and in the meeting of the woods and the field, but the light on the leaves was the main act. "A good one," Brendan said. "Not too big, easy to mail." "I'll bet you could carry it on the plane, if you packed it," Brendan said. They rummaged around and found a shipping box just large enough for the painting and the drawing.
The task was less difficult, and they spent the next half-hour hunting along the edge of the lake, whose shore here was for the most part high and rocky, but broken here and there by shrubby patches of gorse and heather, in company with fine old birches, whose silvery trunks were reflected in the lake.
You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over the moors, the awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred the long winter shut in cities; and with what delight, at the return of the spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors.
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