Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/64

50 surf along the coast. Then he descried a great black waste stretching out beneath him. It was a peat moor.

It was encircled with farms on the heights around; but on the low plain—it must have been over a mile long—there was no trace of human meddling; only a few stacks of peat on the outskirts, with black hummocks and gleaming water holes between them.

"Bonjour, madame!" cried the old raven, and began to wheel in great circles over the moor. It looked so inviting that he settled downward, slowly and warily, and alighted upon a tree-root in the midst of it.

Here it was just as in the old days—a silent wilderness. On some scattered patches of drier soil there grew a little short heather and a few clumps of rushes. They were withered, but on their stiff stems there still hung one or two tufts—black, and sodden by the autumn rain. For the most part the soil was fine, black, and crumbling—wet and full of water-holes. Gray and twisted tree-roots stuck up above the surface, interlaced like a gnarled net-work.

The old raven well understood all that he saw. There had been trees here in the old times, before even his day.

The wood had disappeared; branches, leaves, everything was gone. Only the tangled roots