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Crows' nests, which are never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the forks of ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick eye and a hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of unusual aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like any naturalist or poet.
They then, after making their way down the precipitous side of the hill to its western foot, struck off, under the lead of the hunter, in a line through the forest, preserving their points of compass, when none of their general landmarks were visible, by noting the peculiar weather-beaten appearance of the mosses on the north sides of the trees, and the usual inclination of the tips of the hemlocks from west to east.
A wind from the west sweeping over the long chain of the Blueridge, set the pines and hemlocks wailing on the higher slopes. There seemed no new cause for panic; and folk began to return to their houses. All, however, awaited impatiently the return of day. Then suddenly, toward three o'clock in the morning, another alarm! Flames leaped up above the rocky wall of the Great Eyrie.
It was in the depths of the winter following their union, and the hill country, stern and wild even in midsummer, wore an aspect of savage desolation. It was sheeted in heavy snow, through which here and there in the pastures, a craggy bowlder lifted its face and frowned, and along the woods the stunted pines and hemlocks blackened against a background of leafless oaks and birches.
Having learned that the ice was firm, and assisted her little brother in putting on his skates, instead of returning at once to the house, she sat down in a little screening clump of hemlocks, and gave way to her feelings in a manner not uncommon with girls of her mercurial temperament.
Now and then a servant passed through the alleys of clipped box to see to the lanterns. I was quite alone. In the shelter of a row of low hemlocks and box I stood on a garden-seat at the south side of the house, fifteen feet from a large bow-window, and, parting the branches, I commanded a full view of the dancing-room. I had no business here, and I knew it; I meant but to look and be gone.
It was not an aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump of hemlocks.
As the winter wore itself out the sun began to assert its warmth. All things now steamed at midday, dripping and oozing in sheer gratefulness; the snow became so soft that even the tail of a wood mouse slushed a gash in it, the dripping hemlocks perforating the snow beneath them with myriads of holes. Soon the woods were oozing in earnest, the warm sun swelling the young buds.
He went to the spot which the Master had pointed out the place which the lightnings had stricken in the last Fever-Moon and he cut from the grove of hemlocks a young tree, full of cones, with a finely shaped trunk, and with thriving branches and dark green leaves.
The mansion in the country was an old rambling house, in which there were enough deserted rooms to furnish half a dozen ghosts with desirable lodgings, without inconvenience to the living dwellers. The front approach was through an avenue of hemlocks, dark and untrimmed.
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