The trees which they touched so capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge their numbers.

The tree-tops sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped now and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs.

Up went the rooks and down again, rising in lesser numbers each time as the sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent enough to make the air inside the wood almost dark.

The moss was soft; the tree-trunks spectral.

Beyond them lay a silvery meadow.