1 86 FROM SPRING TO FALL. 



CHAPTER XI. 



FRIENDS OR FOES ? 



The moon shines brightly on the sides of the steep 

 chalk-hill, which is covered in places by thick under- 

 growth. Masses of great trees, many of them in the 

 last state of decay, throw their shadows on them 

 also, the giant limbs looking weird in the fitful 

 gleams of moonlight that flicker and play, now here, 

 now there, on the trunks and branches. These 

 have grown and reached perfection, — gone to decay 

 and mouldered into touchwood for centuries. The 

 rich leaf-mould, many feet in depth, beneath them, 

 is all that remains to tell of a past race of forest 

 giants. At the bottom, where the trees have been 

 hurled to the ground by the fierce winds that tear 

 at times through the long valleys which run from the 



