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As their train, first of horses, and then of mules, passed along, now under avenues of lofty palms, which constituted a deep, moist shade in the midst of the glare of the morning now across fields of sward, kept green by the wells which were made to overflow them; and now through swamps where the fragrant flowering reeds reached up to the flanks of the horses, and courted the hands of the riders, the inhabitants of the region watched their progress, and gave them every variety of kindly greeting.
That is pretty sport, too, to creep under an oak with low-hanging boughs, and in the silence of a glowing autumn-day linger by the hour together in a trance of warm stillness, watching the light tracery of shadow and sun on that smooth sward, only now and then roused by the fleet rush of a deer through the wood, or the brisk chatter of a plume-tailed squirrel, till one hears a distant, sharp, clucking chuckle, and in an instant more pulls the trigger, and upsets a grand old cock, every bronzed feather glittering in the sunshine, and now splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate underwing ground into down as he rolls and flutters; for the first shot rarely kills at once with an amateur; there's too much excitement.
As for the children, big and little, they developed into imps of darkness gone deranged. Suddenly a very wave of fish was sent upon the shore, where, of course, they began to leap about wildly. Not less wildly did the Indians leap among them, throttling the big ones and hurling armfuls of the lesser ones high up on the sward. By that time the net was close in shore.
The two took it into their royal noddles to try a fall, and wrestled together on the grass, when by some ill hap, this same Francis tripped up our Harry, so that he was on the sward for a moment.
Here we waited for the tide, and had the pleasure of surveying the face of the country, the soil of which, at this season, exactly resembles an old brick-kiln, or a field where the green sward is pared up and set a-burning, or rather a smoking, in little heaps to manure the land.
The unworn state of the green sward showed that this was a spot little visited by the townspeople. "We have stumbled on the right place," said the young gentleman, with an assumption of coolness. "It's a pity the thing can't be done properly, with seconds and all that." And he proceeded to take off his doublet.
From this hut one or two little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the bit of sward in which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From this spot again a door in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the downs, where a path wound along the cliffs that formed the side of the bay, till, descending under the storm-tower, it brought you to the root of the breakwater.
But, even then, I sometimes saw only the passing wave of a white robe; or a lovely arm or neck gleamed by in the moonshine; or white feet went walking alone over the moony sward. Nor, I grieve to say, did I ever come much nearer to these glorious beings, or ever look upon the Queen of the Fairies herself. My destiny ordered otherwise.
"Now you're reasonable," said the beggarman; "and since you've given up trying to hang a stranger because he finds fault with your music, I don't mind telling you that if you go back to the gallows you'll find your friends sitting on the sward none the worse for what has happened."
She found herself unconsciously going in the direction of the grove; but when she became aware of it a great revulsion overcame her, and she shuddered. Slowly she took her way across the hard stretch of finely-kept grass which lay on the side of the house away from the wood. The green sward lay like a sea, dotted with huge trees, singly, or in clumps as islands.
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