A few more days--how few they seemed!--and
there was a spot of orange on the beech in a little copse near the limes.
The bucks were bellowing in the forest: as the leaves turned colour their
loves began and the battles for the fair. Again a few days and the snow
came, and rendered visible the slope of the ground in the copse between
the trunks of the trees: the ground there was at other times indistinct
under brambles and withered fern. The squire left the window for his
arm-chair by the fire; but if presently, as often happens when frost
quickly follows a snow-storm, the sun shone out and a beam fell on the
wall, he would get up and look out. Every footstep in the snow contained
a shadow cast by the side, and the dazzling white above and the dark
within produced a blue tint. Yonder by the limes the rabbits ventured out
for a stray bunch of grass not quite covered by the drift, tired, no
doubt, of the bitter bark of the ash-rods that they had nibbled in the
night. As they scampered, each threw up a white cloud of snow-dust behind
him. Yet a few days and the sward grew greener. The pale winter hue,
departing as the spring mist came trailing over, caught for a while in
the copse, and, lingering there, the ruddy buds and twigs of the limes
were refreshed. The larks rose a little way to sing in the moist air. A
rook, too, perching on the top of a low tree, attempted other notes than
his monotonous caw. So absorbed was he in his song that you might have
walked under him unnoticed.
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