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Rh in summer. The steep and narrow path which they were threading wound down the side of a sloping heath, covered with the furze, now in full blossom—a sea of gold, with wave-like shadows, as the wind bent them to and fro. The golden expanse was only varied by knots of the green snake-grass, with its slender and feathery leaves—the most graceful of herbs. A peculiar perfume—for the scent of the furze, when first in bloom, was on the air; while every now and then the yellow butterflies rose upon the wing, till then confounded with the glittering buds on which they rested. The silence would have been profound, had it not been broken by a low but perpetual murmur, like rippling water, which told that the fragrant artisans of summer, the bees, were busy gathering in their honey-harvest—at once labourers and manufacturers. Far in the distance lay the mighty forest, gloomy and solid, as if some dark mountain girdling in the valley. The sunshine went sweeping rapidly from the foreground to the utmost extent of the horizon; the shadow coiled up before it; gradually the breaks among the wood became distinct, the dense blackness