Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/138

CHAPTER XII. {|align="center" style="font-size:90%;line-height:135%" "We meet again&mdash;we meet again, once more, We that were parted&mdash;happy that we meet, More happy were we not to part again."
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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 extreme borders of the park-grounds. The position had been judiciously 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 themselves partial occupants of the finest ornament of the estate&mdash;the extensive grove of solemn oaks, with arms branching out on every side, sufficient each of them for the shelter of a troop. They rose, thickly placed all around the dwelling, concentrating in a beautiful defile upon the front, and thus continuing for the distance 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-drooping beards of white moss hanging down mournfully, and dipping into the river at every pressure of the wind upon the boughs, from which they 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 surface, while his companion, like a true scout, wandered off in other parts of the grove with the hope to obtain intelligence, or at least to watch the movements of the British officers, whose presence had prevented their own approach to the dwelling.

At Singleton gazed around upon the prospect, the whole scene