Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/112

98 with twigs, leaves, and tree dust, big as three rooks' nests. Only recently a fine white-tailed eagle was soaring over the woods; he may have followed the line of the sea down from the Hebrides. Up from the sea comes the wind, drawing swifter between the beech trunks, resting a little in the sunny glades, on again into the woods. The glass-green river yonder coloured by the wind runs on seaward, there are thin masts of ships visible at its mouth miles away, the wind whistles in their shrouds; beyond the blue by the shore, far, far distant on the level cloud, the dim ship has sailed along the horizon. It dries the pale grass, and rustles the restless shrunken leaves on the ground; it dries the grey lichen on the beech trunks; it swings the fledglings in the rooks' nests, and carries the ring-dove on a speedier wing. Blackbirds whistle all around, the woods are full of them; willow-wrens plaintively sing in the trees; other birds call—the dry wind mingles their notes. It is a hungry wind—it makes a wanderer as hungry as Robin Hood; it drives him back to the houses, and there by a door-step lies a heap of bucks'-horns thrown down like an armful of wood.