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The needle of his nature urged him forward, straight along a narrow valley lane that ambled between mildewed fences and their inclosed fields; between untouched walls of wild-grape, red-bud and blossoming dog-wood; and he knew that his intuition was not sending him astray.
"Why is this?" he continued, looking severely at the three who had so lately been opposed to him in deadly contest. "Here are men with skins like the blossom of the dog-wood, and yet their hands are so dark that I cannot see them!"
Behind them lay New York city, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg, the tall masts and steeples rising through a sea of hazy gold, and belted with the silvery flash of the river. The banks, on either side, were clothed with soft, vivid green, broken with dog-wood trees in full flower, and maples in the first sweet crimson of their foliage.
No description can give an idea of the variety, the profusion, and the luxuriance of them. The Dog-wood, whose lateral fan-like branches are dotted all over with star-like blossoms of splendid white, as large as those of the gumcistus.
But, perhaps, there is only one creed by which you can be both at once the creed of the growing grass, and the blue sky and the running river, the creed of the dog-wood and the skunk-cabbage, the creed of the red-wing and the blue heron the creed of the great god Pan.
I think it is the maple, or sugar- tree, that first sprinkles the forest with rich crimson; the beech follows, with all its harmony of golden tints, from pale yellow up to brightest orange. The dog-wood gives almost the purple colour of the mulberry; the chesnut softens all with its frequent mass of delicate brown, and the sturdy oak carries its deep green into the very lap of winter.
In East Prussia, the sap of dog-wood, absorbed in a handkerchief, will fulfil every wish; and a Brandenburg remedy for fever is to lie naked under a cherry-tree on St. John's Day, and to shake the dew on one's back. Elsewhere we have alluded to the flowering of the fern on this anniversary, and there is the Bohemian idea that its seed shines like glittering gold.
Neither glanced upward, though they came so near the base of the hill that the envious spy on the summit, peering down, identified the person and the voice of the lady as belonging unmistakably to Miss Hale. The pair paused under a dog-wood from which Captain Danvers plucked a flowery bough; then they resumed their stroll, walking toward the village, arm in arm.
My mother on her first visit to Baron's Court saw a woodman trimming the dog-wood, and inquired of him the name of this unfamiliar red-barked shrub. On being told that it was dog-wood she asked, "Why is it called dog-wood?" "It might be on account of its bark," came the ready answer.
Such honeysuckles and such dog-wood blossoms never grew before. Maybe if the fates are propitious, I'll come back here to this picturesque country to get me a wife, after the war is over. Who knows? Then I'll be a laurel-crowned hero, having whaled out the Yankees to a frizzle, and all the fair ones will be sighing for my hand and heart! Umph! I am impatient for the conflict.
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