Where the drain or furrow entered the wood was a wire-netting firmly
fixed, and over it tall pitched palings, sharp at the top. The wood was
enclosed with a thick hawthorn hedge that looked impassable; but the
keeper's footsteps, treading down the hedge-parsley and brushing aside
the 'gicks,' guided me behind a bush where was a very convenient gap.
These signs and the smooth-worn bark of an ash against which it was
needful to push proved that this quiet path was used somewhat
frequently.
Inside the wood the grass and the bluebell leaves--the bloom past and
ripening to seed--so hung over the trail that it was difficult to
follow. It wound about the ash stoles in the most circuitous manner--now
to avoid the thistles, now a bramble thicket, or a hollow filled with
nettles. Then the ash poles were clothed with the glory of the
woodbine--one mass of white and yellow wax-like flowers to a height of
eight or nine feet, and forming a curtain of bloom from branch to
branch.
After awhile I became aware that the trail was approaching the hill. At
the foot it branched; and the question arose whether to follow the fork
that zig-zagged up among the thickets or that which seemed to plunge
into the recesses beneath. I had never been in this wood before--the
time was selected because it was probable that the keeper would be
extremely occupied with his pheasant chicks.
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