74 The Amatc2ir Poacher. 



CHAPTER V. 



WOODLAND TWILIGHT : TRAITORS ON THE GIBBET. 



IN a hedge that joined a wood, and about a hundred 

 yards from it, there was a pleasant hiding-place 

 beside a pollard ash. The bank was hollow with 

 rabbit-buries : the summer heat had hardened the 

 clay of the mound and caused it to crack and crumble 

 wherever their excavations left a precipitous edge. 

 Some way up the trunk of the tree an immense flat 

 fungus projected, roughly resembling the protruding 

 lip of a savage enlarged by the insertion of a piece of 

 wood. It formed a black ledge standing out seven or 

 eight inches, two or three inches thick, and extending 

 for a foot or more round the bark. The pollard, 

 indeed, was dead inside, and near the ground the 

 black touch-wood showed. Ash timber must become 

 rarer year by year ; for, being so useful, it is con- 

 stantly cut down, while few new saplings are planted 

 or encouraged to become trees. 



