Walter had once written a poem describing them.

The wind was sighing and rustling among the frosted brown bracken ferns, then lessening sorrowfully away down the brook.

Walter had said once that he loved the melancholy of the autumn wind on a November day.

The old Tree Lovers still clasped each other in a faithful embrace, and the White Lady, now a great white-branched tree, stood out beautifully fine, against the grey velvet sky.

Walter had named them long ago; and last November, when he had walked with her and Miss Oliver in the Valley, he had said, looking at the leafless Lady, with a young silver moon hanging over her, "A white birch is a beautiful Pagan maiden who has never lost the Eden secret of being naked and unashamed." Miss Oliver had said, "Put that into a poem, Walter," and he had done so, and read it to them the next day--just a short thing with goblin imagination in every line of it.