Part 20 (1/2)

”Foxes always have two holes,” said Scarlett, dreamily.

”So do rabbits. Lots of holes sometimes. But we're not foxes, and we're not rabbits.”

”No; but you'll be like a water-rat directly, if you sit on that moss.

It's as slippery as can be close to the edge. Come and get some nuts.”

”Not ripe enough,” said Fred, idly.

”Never mind; let's get some, whether or no.”

”Where shall we go? We've got all there are about the edge of the lake.”

”Let's go down there by the big oaks. There's a great clump of nuts just beyond, where we have not been yet.”

”Oh yes, we have,” said Fred, laughing; ”leastwise, I have--one day when I came over and you weren't at home.”

”That's always your way, Fred. I never come over to your place and take your things.”

”Halloa!” laughed Fred, rising slowly from where he had lounged upon the mossy, b.u.t.tress-like roots. ”Who came and helped himself to my gilliflower apples?”

Scarlett laughed. ”Well, they looked so tempting, and we were to have picked them that day. Come along.”

They went crus.h.i.+ng and rustling through the woody wilderness for about a hundred yards from the side of the lake. It was a part sacred to the birds and rabbits, a dense dark thicket where oaks and beeches shut out the light of day, and for generations past the woodman's axe had never struck a blow. Here and there the forest monarchs had fallen from old age, and where they had left a vacancy hazel stubs flourished, springing up gaily, and revelling on the rotten wood and dead leaves which covered the ground, and among which grew patches of nuts and briar, with the dark dewberry and swarthy dwale.

Here, as they walked, the lads' feet crushed in the moss-covered, rotten wood, and at every step a faint damp odour of mould, mingled with the strong scent of crushed ferns and fungi, rose to their nostrils.

”Never mind the nuts,” said Fred; ”let's get out in the suns.h.i.+ne again.

Pst! there he goes.”

He stopped short as he spoke, watching the scuttling away of a rabbit, whose white cottony tail was seen for a moment before it disappeared in a tunnel beneath a hazel clump.

”No; we'll have a few while we are here,” said Scarlett, making a bound on to the trunk of a huge oak which had been blown down and lay horizontally; but while one portion of its roots stood up s.h.a.ggy and weird-looking, the rest remained in the ground, and supported the life of the old tree, which along its mighty bole was covered with st.u.r.dy young shoots for about thirty feet from the roots. There it forked into two branches, each of which was far bigger than the trunk of an ordinary tree; but while one was fairly green, the other was perfectly dead, and such verdure as it displayed was that of moss and abundant patches of polypody, which flourished upon the decaying wood.

Opposite the spot where Scarlett leaped upon the tree-trunk--that is to say, on the other side--the thicket was too dense to invite descent, and the lad began to walk along toward the fork, pressing the young branches aside as he went, followed by Fred, who had leapt up and joined him.

”Here, I'm getting so hot,” cried the latter. ”What's the good of slaving along here! Let's go back.”

”I don't like going back in anything,” replied Scarlett, as he walked on till he reached the fork, and continued his way along the living branch of the old tree, with Fred still following, till they stood in the midst of a maze of jagged and gnarled branches rising high above their heads, and shutting them in.

These dead boughs were from the fellow limb to that on which they stood, the two huge trunks being about six feet apart.

”There, now we must go back,” said Fred.

”No. It looks more open there,” cried Scarlett. ”If we could jump on to the other trunk, we could go on beyond.”

”Well, anybody could jump that,” said Fred.

”Except Fred Forrester,” replied Scarlett, mockingly.