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It was noon now, and so hot that the dogwoods and scrub-oaks began to turn up the silvery under-side of their leaves, and all the foliage looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of one of the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always a breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on the grass.
There is a seat for the driver; the occupants lie on the floor and adjust themselves as best they can to the bumpings of the hilly roads. The country reminded one of parts of our own West brown hills, with sparse pines and scrub-oaks, meadows ablaze with scarlet poppies, and over all blue sky, sunshine, and the breeze from the near-by sea.
Before us lay an amber- coloured, sun-scorched plain; beyond were the foot-hills, bristling with chaparral, scrub-oaks, pines and cedars; beyond these again rose the grey peaks of the Santa Lucia range, pricking the eastern horizon. Over all hung the palpitating skies, eternally and exasperatingly blue, a-quiver with light and heat. "Somebody's coming," said Ajax.
"California Joe" also went along to guide us through the scrub-oaks covering the ridge, but even the most thorough exploration failed to discover any route more practicable than that already in use; indeed, the high ground was, if anything, worse than the bottom land, our horses in the springy places and quicksands often miring to their knees.
No, sir; my idea of perfect happiness is to be hiking along here with you, Miss Golden." He gazed down upon her with a mixture of amorousness and awe. The leaves of scrub-oaks along the road crinkled and shone in the sun. She was lulled to slumberous content. She lazily beamed her pleasure back at him, though a tiny hope that he would be circumspect, not be too ardent, stirred in her.
Along the left of the Spanish army, as they moved in the direction of Herenthals, was a continuous fringe of scrub-oaks, intermixed with tall beeches, skirting the heath, and forming a leafless but almost impervious screen for the movements of small detachments of troops.
It is a matter of general history how General Hooker led his army across the Rappahannock into that ugly region at Chancellorsville, with its morasses, hills, and ravines, its dense forest of scrub-oaks and pines, and its square miles of tangled undergrowth, which was justly known as The Wilderness; and how he strongly intrenched himself against an attack in front, with breastworks of logs and an abattis of felled trees.
She was in a well-defined path now; she tried to run, but her legs were heavy; she stumbled a great deal, and her breath made strange, distressing sounds as it issued from her open lips. Hounding the steep shoulder of the ridge, she hastened down a declivity into a knot of scrub-oaks and ebony-trees, then halted, staring ahead of her.
The wind whistled eerily through the scant-leaved scrub-oaks on the slopes above. But from the room at the window of which he listened there came no sound. Adrian felt like one hoaxed, made ridiculous by his own sentimentality. He strode on. But when he reached the farther corner some involuntary impulse turned him back.
She leaned back laughing against a tree-trunk, pelting Cicely with witch-hazel pods, making the terrier waltz for scraps of ginger-bread, and breaking off now and then to imitate, with her clear full notes, the call of some hidden marsh-bird, or the scolding chatter of a squirrel in the scrub-oaks. "Is that what you'd like most about the journey looking down the chimneys?"
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