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These were clad in the dull gray garb which becomes the sober season of the year, and were decked with yellow straw, and dead, brown leaves. Out of the wood came the May-king and his followers, clad in the gayest raiment, and decked with evergreens and flowers. With staves and willow-withes they fell upon Old Winter's champions, and tried to drive them from the sward.
Thereafter, that they might keep up with him, all men were trapping and breaking wild horses. Many horses were broken, and some men, but I lived at the last to the day when, at the changing of camp-sites in the pursuit of the meat in its seasons, our very babes, in baskets of willow-withes, were slung side and side on the backs of our horses that carried our camp-trappage and dunnage.
"This isn't a pine tree, is it?" asked Malcolm, touching a small tree with very slender branches, some of them as slight as willow-withes and covered with grayish-red bark, while that on the main stem was bluish gray. "It is a species of pine," was the reply, "because it belongs to the Coniferae, or cone-producing, family; but it is not an evergreen, although it ranks as such.
No luck, but he brought back some birch-bark and a handful of willow-withes, and set about making a rude substitute. Before they had despatched breakfast the great red moon arose, so it was not morning, but evening. So much the better. The crust would be firmer. The moon was full; it was bright enough to travel, and travel they must.
He has had the floor made of dried willow-withes, which creak when they are trodden upon. He hears anyone stealing in, and he hears if a scribe touches the forbidden books. He has heard us, and he is feeling after us! Don't you feel as if cold snake-tongues were touching your cheeks, your forehead, your eyelids?" "Yes, I do."
It never entered anybody's head to weave a basket out of willow-withes. Sometimes the men and women tied tough vines about the bundles of ferns and branches that they carried to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten or twenty generations we might have worked up to the weaving of baskets.
The warrior then resumed his former position, placing the willow-withes which had bound him in such a manner as readily to appear, by the light of the fire, as if they were still holding him firm. This arrangement had scarcely been made, when a couple of grim warriors appeared in the doorway, after listening to the report of the girls.
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