It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on fairly well.

Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing.

He was now engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work daily like an automaton.
The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day.

The whole of the copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he bent and wove the twigs.

Beside him was a square, compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes.