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Hamadryads veiled themselves, each in her conscious tree, eluding human approach. She steals more gently along, that she may haply surprise a vision. The little grassy plain appears beyond the wavering oak-branches. It is reached at last, and there, surely it is no delusion, there rests a sleeping youth! Another step, and she bent aside the boughs. He stands erect, listening.
She was seated in the garden, in the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes made of peeled oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as refuse after barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter.
By scrambling down this, clinging to the oak-branches, one reaches a bluff of chalk rock, hollowed out by Nature at the foot to the depth of 10 feet, and running horizontally to the length of from 32 to 34 feet, and terminating in a natural barrier of rock. It contracts in one place so as to form two chambers.
But the chaplain spoke to them afterwards very effectively, as usual; and then I proposed to them to hold up their hands and pledge themselves to be faithful to those still in bondage. They entered heartily into this, and the scene was quite impressive, beneath the great oak-branches.
England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose; who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649; who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated at Westminster Hall and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance.
In the midst of the babel she found enchanted quietude. Along the road the shadows from oak-branches were inked on the snow like bars of music. Then the sled came out on the surface of Lake Minniemashie. Across the thick ice was a veritable road, a short-cut for farmers.
The little bed-chamber, with its high mattressed bed, covered with the Acadian home-spun quilt, trimmed with netting fringe, its bit of mirror over the bureau, the bottle of perfumed grease to keep the locks black and glossy, the prayer-beads and blessed palms hanging on the wall, the low, black polished spinning-wheel, the loom, the métier d' Adorine famed throughout the parish, the ever goodly store of cotton and yarn hanks swinging from the ceiling, and the little square, open window which looked under the mossy oak-branches to look over the prairie; and once again all blue and white lilies they were all there, as Adorine was there; but there was more not there.
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