Page:Under the greenwood tree (1872 Volume 2).pdf/107

during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately with clouds of damp night air from the valleys. He reached the keeper's house, where the grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale against the unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged, and paused at the garden gate.

He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession advancing from the door in his front. It consisted first of Enoch the trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern dangling in his hand; then came Mrs. Day, the light of the lantern revealing that she bore in her arms curious objects about a foot long, in the form of Latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper dipped in brimstone,—called matches by bee-fanciers); next came Miss Day, with a shawl thrown over her head; and behind all, in the gloom, Mr. Frederic Shinar.