THE STORM 



THE BEECH WOOD 



beyond a tangled mass of once tall bracken, now 

 crushed by winter's heavy snow to form a dry warm 

 house, from which peers out a bright-eyed rabbit. 

 Across the path there lies a victim of the storm ; its A VICTIM OF 



sundered prostrate limbs proclaim the mighty rend- 

 ing crash with which it fell and drowned the blasting 

 roar of angry Nature, tearing and throwing up a wall 

 of roots and earth, itself to lie unmoved and rot, the 

 giant battered limbs, moss and fungus clothed, some 

 so thickly coated that no sign of bark is seen ; a 

 padded seat on which to rest and watch a shower of 

 green leaves^ rising and falling in drifts among 

 the boles and branches, stippled and dappled by a 

 thousand shafts of varied light and shade. 



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