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On the sward of the Bois d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread arms, like fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and the sound of the axe is rarely still. But strangest of all, and in appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts of young wood. The ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, and strewn with fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark.
The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd so often stands watching his sheep feeding along to this field, is decked in summer with many flowers. By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long stem, surrounded with small yellow petals. One day towards autumn I noticed a man looking along a hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant.
When, riding on the plain, I discovered a patch of scarlet verbenas in full bloom, the creeping plants covering an area of several yards, with a moist, green sward sprinkled abundantly with the shining flower-bosses, I would throw myself from my pony with a cry of joy to lie on the turf among them and feast my sight on their brilliant colour.
We stopped at San Miguel, another of the haciendas of the Company, where the German barrel-process is worked. Just behind the hacienda is the Ojo de Agua the Eye of Water a beautiful basin, surrounded by a green sward and a wood of oaks and fir-trees.
The effort was fatal to him; for in reaching too far he lost his balance, and fell heavily upon the sward. A shout of exultation burst from the English troops, and numerous voices now encouraged the pursued to renew his exertions.
She was lying prone on the sward, her face hidden on her arms; and it was true that he had heard her sob, for she was weeping without restraint. The change in him, the evidence of suffering which she had read in his face, to say nothing of his reproaches, had done something more than shock her.
A later writer, the author of "The Gamekeeper at Home" and other books, says: "Those only know a country who are acquainted with its footpaths. By the roads, indeed, the outside may be seen; but the footpaths go through the heart of the land. There are routes by which mile after mile may be traveled without leaving the sward.
Ruth cast a timorous glance towards the workers, and murmured something about not having much time to spare, but she placed the water-cans on the ground and sank down on the grass. Stanford throwing himself on the sward at her feet, but, seeing that she shrank back, he drew himself further from her, resting where he might gaze upon her face.
Choosing without hesitation one of two tracks, ill-trodden, but such as in that district and at that period passed for roads, he took his way along it at a good pace. A wide brown basin, bog for the most part, but rising here and there into low mounds of sward or clumps of thorn-trees, stretched away to the foot of the hills.
Then, under her supervision Billy enlarged and remodeled it and Billy's wife waved some sort of a fairy wand over it, for it became over night a lovely, story-book home. When everything was ready she had the unsightly willows cut, revealing a gently rising stretch of mossy sward ending in a cluster of old trees from which the cozy house peeped roguishly, tantalizingly.
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