156 The Amateur Poacher 



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 



