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Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall fir-trees stood like two dense walls forming a picturesque, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed over the fence and walked along the avenue, slipping over the fir-needles which lay two inches deep on the ground. It was still and dark, and only here and there on the high tree-tops the vivid golden light quivered and made rainbows in the spiders' webs.
The dog was looking on, and just in front lay another rabbit, while a couple of yards away there was a hole scratched beneath the root of a tree, and the clean yellow sand scattered all about over the fir-needles.
The quiet woods into which they had passed again after leaving Fawkham Green now seemed full of menace; the rough road, with the deep powdery ruts and the grass and fir-needles at the side, no longer seemed a pleasant path leading home, but a treacherous device to lead them deeper into danger.
An invisible power appeared to draw her towards the group, and to attract her by a beautiful flower, whose calyx opened at her approach. Unable to resist the impulse, she stepped into the circle and plucked the flower. No sooner had she done so than her feet took deep root in the earth, her hair stiffened into fir-needles, and her arms became branches.
Beside it lay the whitest of linen towels, with a comb made of mother-of-pearl, and a brush of fir-needles, any one of which she had been far too lazy to use. She dashed the glass out of the wise woman's hand, and there it lay, broken into a thousand pieces!
This heap was exactly what might have been swept together by half-a-dozen men using long gardeners' brooms, and industriously clearing the ground under the firs of the fragments which had fallen from them. It appeared to be entirely composed of small twigs, fir-needles, dead leaves, and similar things.
Dried heather and fir-needles stuck to her matted and untidy plaits, as they hung out from the gaudily spotted cotton handkerchief; she had an old pair of men's hobnailed shoes on her feet. They did not know whether she was old or young; her stout body and hanging breasts disfigured her, but that her face had not been ugly once upon a time could still be seen. The little one resembled her.
Pete Warboys too had been compelled to slacken somewhat in his clumsy bovine rush, and Tom observed with satisfaction, as the minutes went on, and they must have been pursuer and pursued toiling over the slippery fir-needles for quite a quarter of an hour, that Pete glanced over his shoulder more often than before. "He's getting pumped out," muttered Tom.
Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering, from the heart of a blue-black cloud.
"It will be a grand run before breakfast, and there's plenty of time." From this moment, as Tom trotted quickly over the fir-needles at the dog's heels, the poor brute went steadily on, uttering a low, muffled bark every now and then as it threaded its way in and out among the fir-trees as if bound for some particular spot.
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