ad lay the wide, rough road, ending in a broken avenue of ancient
oaks, and bordered on either hand by a strip of waste land overgrown
with coarse grasses and low thickets of maple--which leads up to the
entrance of the Brockhurst woods. Over these hung a soft, bluish haze,
making them appear vast in extent, and upraising the dark ridge of the
fir forest, which crowns them, to mountain height against the western
sky. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy road before Richard's
horse; and, rising at last, with a long-drawn whir of wings, skimmed
the top of the bank and dropped into the pale stubble field on the
other side of it. He paused at the head of the avenue while the
keeper's wife--in lilac apron and sunbonnet--ran out to open the big,
white gate; the dogs meantime, from their kennels under the Spanish
chestnuts upon the slope behind her gabled cottage, setting up a
vociferous chorus. Thus heralded, Richard passed into the whispering,
mysterious stillness of the autumn woods.

The summer had been dry and fine, the foliage unusually rich and heavy,
all the young wood ripening well. Consequently the turn of the leaf was
very brilliant that year. The sweetly, sober, English landscape seemed
to have run mad and decked itself, as for a masquerade, in extravagant
splendours of colour. The smooth-stemmed beeches had taken on every
tint from fiery brown, through orange and amber, to verdigris green
touching latest July shoots. The round-headed oaks, practising even in
carnival time a measure of restraint, had arrayed themselves in a
hundred rich, finely-gradated tones of russet and umber. While, here
and there, a tall bird-cherry, waxing wanton, had clothed itself like
the Woman of Babylon in rose-scarlet from crown to lowest black-barked
twig. Higher up, the larch plantations rose in crowds of
butter-coloured spires. Amethystine and blood-red, white-spotted
toadstools, in little companies, pushed through the light soil on
either side the road. Trailing sprays of bramble glowed as flame. Rowan
berries hung in heavy coral bunches, and the dogwood spread itself in
sparse china-pink clusters. Only the undergrowth of crooked alders, in
swampy, low-lying places, kept its dark, purplish green; and the light
foliage of the ash waved in shadowy pallor against its knobbed and
knotted branches; and the ranks of the encircling firs retained their
solemn habit, as though in protest against the universal riot.

The stream hidden away