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It was February now, and there was a hint of spring in the air. The sun was shining as if trying to make up for the days it had missed, the green shoots were pushing daringly forth, and a mavis in a holly-bush was chirping loudly and cheerfully. To-morrow they might be plunged back into winter, the green things nipped and discouraged, the birds silent but to-day it was spring.
From the holly-bush swung the corpse of the wren, and from the throats of the Wran-Boys came the song that recounts the wicked wren's pursuit and slaughter: "The Wran, the Wran, the King of all birds, On Stephenses' Day was cot in the furze, And though he is little, his family is great, Rise up, good gentlemen, and give us a thrate Huzzay!"
A bit of moss-grown wall, a singularly shaped holly-bush, a white stone, took fantastic and supernatural appearances, and once she stopped, paralyzed with fear, before the grotesque shadow that a dead tree threw over an unexpected glade.
I stood, however, in the shadow of the tall holly-bush, which, standing between the window and the porch, at present screened me from observation, but did not prevent me from seeing two figures come forth into the moonlight: Mrs. Graham followed by another—not Rachel, but a young man, slender and rather tall. O heavens, how my temples throbbed!
In fact, the ancient aspect of the place the tall, massive chimney at the gable, the heavy, projecting eaves, and the holly-bush in a warm nook beside the front porch, had, nineteen years before, so forcibly reminded one of Howe's soldiers of his father's homestead in mid-England, that he was numbered among the missing after the Brandywine battle, and presently turned up as a hired hand on the Barton farm, where he still lived, year in and year out.
Ah! just below was the spot where the road to the convent parted from the road to the farm; and, as Martin had apprehended, they were stopping for him. The Chevalier ordered one of the armed men behind him to ride up to the farm and summon Martin to speak with him; and then he and his son, while waiting under the holly-bush, continued their conversation. 'So that is the state of things!
Thereon Fresnoy was for taking the road at once, but having no mind to be followed, I gave the word to wait until the two were out of sight. I think, as we sat our horses in the rain, the holly-bush not being large enough to shelter us all, we were as sorry a band as ever set out to rescue a lady; nor was it without pain that I looked round and saw myself reduced to command such people.
After this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly-bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow. He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain. Nobody except himself came near the spot that night. But the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman.
And once they met a wandering cat. And that cat seemed to go mad, for she shifted about the steep bank of that stream, and up, and about here she swore because the spikes pricked her and down a holly-bush, as if she had got a rocket tied to her tail. She had not, of course. She was hunting black rats. I suppose she saw them.
The snow was as dry and hard as powdered sugar, and her cloud was stiff with her frozen breath; her ears felt as though she had thrust them into a holly-bush, and the razor-like wind in that unsheltered spot must have arrested the circulation of any less healthy and youthful pedestrian. The morning had dawned prosperously for her, as Mrs.
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