TOR: THE BROOK-PATH

The waggon-track leading to the Upper Woods almost always presented
something of interest, and often of beauty. The solitude of the place
seemed to have attracted flowers and ferns as well as wild animals and
birds. For though flowers have no power of motion, yet seeds have a
negative choice and lie dormant where they do not find a kindly welcome.
But those carried hither by the birds or winds took root and flourished,
secure from the rude ploughshare or the sharp scythe.

The slow rumble of waggon-wheels seldom disturbed the dreamy silence, or
interrupted the song of the birds; so seldom that large docks and
thistles grew calmly beside the ruts untouched by hoofs. From the thick
hedges on either side trailing brambles and briars stretched far out,
and here and there was a fallen branch, broken off by the winds, whose
leaves had turned brown and withered while all else was green. Round
sarsen stones had been laid down in the marshy places to form a firm
road, but the turf had long since covered most of them. Where the smooth
brown surfaces did project mosses had lined the base, and rushes leaned
over and hid the rest.

In the ditches, under the shade of the brambles, the hart's-tongue fern
extended its long blade of dark glossy green. By the decaying stoles the
hardy fern flourished, under the trees on the mounds the lady fern could
be found, and farther up nearer the wood the tall brake almost
supplanted the bushes. Oak and ash boughs reached across: in the ash the
wood-pigeons lingered. Every now and then the bright colours of the
green woodpeckers flashed to and fro their nest in a tree hard by. They
would not have chosen it had not the place been nearly as quiet as the
wood itself.

Blackthorn bushes jealously encroached on the narrow stile that entered
the lane from a meadow--a mere rail thrust across a gap. The gates, set
in deep recesses--short lanes themselves cut through the mounds--were
rotten and decayed, so as to scarcely hold together, and not to be moved
without care. Hawthorn branches on each side pushed forward and lessened
the opening; on the ground, where the gateposts had rotted nearly off,
fungi came up in thick bunches.

The little meadows to which they led were rich in oaks, growing on the
'shore' of the ditches, tree after tree. The grass in them was not
plentiful, but the flowers were many; in the spring the orchis sent up
its beautiful purple, and in the heat of summe