in the hazel coppice gurgled and murmured.
Beech-masts pattered down, startling the stillness as with a sudden
dropping of thunder rain. Squirrels, disturbed in the ingathering of
their winter store, whisked up the boles of the great trees and scolded
merrily from the forks of the high branches. Shy wild things rustled
and scampered unseen through the tangled undergrowth and beds of
bracken. While that veil of bluish haze touched all the distance of the
landscape with a delicate mystery, and softly blotted the vista of each
wide shooting drive, or winding pathway, to left and right.

And as Richard rode onward, leaves gay even in death fluttering down
around him, his mood began to suffer change. He ceased to think and
began to feel merely. First came a dreamy delight in the beauty of the
scene about him. Then the sense of mystery grew upon him--of mystery,
not merely hanging in the delicate haze, but dwelling in the endless
variety of form and colour which met his eyes, of mystery inviting him
in the soft, multitudinous voices of the woodland. And as the minutes
passed this sense grew increasingly provocative, became too
increasingly elusive. The light leapt into Dickie's eyes. He smiled to
himself. He was filled with unreasoning expectation. He seemed--it was
absurd, yet very charming--to be playing hide-and-seek with some glad
secret which at any instant might be revealed to him. It murmured to
him in the brook. It scolded at him merrily with the scolding
squirrels. It startled the surrounding stillness, with the down
pattering beech-masts and fluttering of leaves. It eluded him deftly,
rustling away unseen through the green and gold of the bracken. Lastly
when, reaching the summit of the ridge of hill, he entered upon the
levels of the great table-land, it hailed him in the long-drawn sighing
of the fir forest. For a wind, suddenly awakened, swept towards him
from some far distance, neared, broke overhead, as summer waves upon a
shingly beach, died in delicious whispers, only to sweep up and break
and die again. Meanwhile the gray pall of cloud parted in the west,
disclosing spaces of faint yet clearest blue, and the declining sun,
from behind dim islands of shifting vapour, sent forth immense rays of
mild and misty light.

Richard laughed involuntarily to himself. For there was a fantastic,
curiously alluring influence in all this. It spoke to him as in
delicate persuasion. His sense of expectation intensified. He