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Still, nightly, she roamed abroad, moving in and out of the dried herbage everywhere strewn in her paths among the tree-roots, till the sapless leaves impaled on the sharp points of her spines formed such a cluster that she lost all semblance of a living creature.

But apparently it took him a long while to get his mind clear as to the cause of the disturbance; for fully five minutes had elapsed when suddenly a big tuft of moss was tossed out upon the snow, followed by a cloud of dust and an angry creaking of the tree-roots. Great masses of snow were shaken from the swaying tops of the firs, and fell with light thuds upon the ground.

They passed between two booths, and emerged at the back of one of the rows. They stumbled over the tree-roots before their eyes got used to the uncertain light which fell in patches between the tents. A dog, which lay gnawing at something or other, rose with a snarl, and dragged its prey further into the darkness, among the trees.

The gun was leaned up against the tree-roots; we each sat astride facing each other, the bigness of the tree making it rather an uneasy seat; I slung the wallet round and placed it between us, and had just thrust in my hand, while Pomp wrenched himself round to hang the ammunition pouches close to the gun on a ragged root behind him, when, all at once, the boy's left leg flew over and kicked the wallet out of my hands, and he bounded a couple of yards away to stand grinning angrily and rubbing himself.

Alcott represented to me a fairy element in the up-country region in which I so often saw him. I heard that he walked the woods for the purpose of finding odd coils of tree-roots and branches, which would on the instant suggest to him an ingenious use in his art of rustic building.

He could not see an opening anywhere, and a strange green light came through the matted branches, the ground was slippery with moisture and decaying substances; from the cliff hung quivering fern-fronds with their points downward, and water dripping from them like wet hair. Huge tree-roots, like the naked bodies of black goblins writhing to get free, lay stretched across the rocks.

Near the edge of the river we frequently see myriads of tree-roots bent almost at right angles, giving the trees the appearance of standing on spider-legs in the water. Sometimes the forest opens overhead, but nearly all the way we are covered by a roof of green, and at every turn appear new scenes of beauty and luxuriance.

Perhaps, during certain conditions of the atmosphere, a taint borne from me, on a wave rather than a current of air, to the wide archway beneath the tree-roots in front of the main entrance, and then drawn down into the draughty passages was detected by them immediately they passed beyond the stagnant atmosphere of the blind-alley where they slept.

The Maori comes to my aid and gets a hold, and together we are rolled over on the ground. Alas! we have not between us Old Colonial's knack and activity, nor are we endowed with muscles of such steely fibre. We keep our clutch determinedly, desperately, and we are flung and bumped among the tree-roots and brushwood.

The anthropomorphic patch of mold on the floor, the form of the yellowish vapor, and the curvature of the tree-roots in some of the old tales, all argued at least a remote and reminiscent connection with the human shape; but how representative or permanent that similarity might be, none could say with any kind of certainty.