Page:The Partisan, v1.djvu/136

 · 1 rn: raurrsm. 133 to join them in their walk——a suggestion which his entertainer answered by leading the way. In the mean while, go we back to our old acquaintance, _ Major Singleton, and his trusty coadjutor, Humphries. CHAPTER XI. ¥`$Z“5f§‘w‘“."“.¤p..`4'2a‘.’li.?,$,'§,°{‘»§’.W§$Q'e'2T X More happy were we not to part again." Kenrmo close in cover, Major Singleton and his guide paused at length in the shelter of a gigantic oak, that grew, with a hundred others, along the egreme borders of the park-grounds. The position ha been judicious} taken, as it gave them an unobstructed view of the Mansion House, the lawn in front, and a portion of the adjacent garden. They were them- selves partial occupants of the finest ornament of the estate—the extensive grove of solemn oaks, with arms branching out on every side, suihcient each of them for the shelter of a troop. They rose, thickly placed all around the dwelling, concentrating in a beautiful deiile upon the front, and thus continuing for the dis- tance of a full mile until they gathered in mass upon the main road of the country. In the rear they stretched away singly or in groups, artfully disposed, but without regularity, down to the very verge of the river, over which many of them sloped with all their weight of limbs and luxuriance upon them; their long-droop- ing beard of white moss hanging down mourufully, and dipping into the river at eve pressure of the wind upon the boughs from which it depended. Under one of these trees, the largest among them, the very patriarch of the collection, the two adventurers paused; Singleton throwing himself upon a cluster of the thick roots which had risen above and now ran along the Von. I.--M