Page 53 (1/2)

To the north the glebe was bounded by a thick wood, a rank and dense

"second growth" springing from earth where had once stood, decorously

apart, the

trees, saplings and underbrush, overrun fro pines to the bushes of dogwood and sassafras, and the rotting,

ancient stu vine

It was such a fantastic thicket as one ht look to find in fairyland,

thorny and impenetrable: here as tall as a ten years' pine, there sunken

away to the height of the wild honeysuckles; everywhere backed by blue

sky, heavy with odors, filled, with the flash of wings and the songs of

birds To the east the thicket fell away to low and rew, and myriads of myrtle bushes

Later in the year women and children would venture in upon the unstable earth for the sake of the

rant wax, and once and again an

outlying slave had been tracked by s to the dark recesses of