The Woodlanders

Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in

the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration,

frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy,

in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs

budded. There never was a particular moment at which it could be said

they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between

two who in the winter had been strangers.

Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had

long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night.

The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The

flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they

had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them

the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door

people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people

replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.

The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London

surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as

he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been

necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book

in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly

oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that

sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt

to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves

with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a

curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was

common enough here about this time, was not common to him.

Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the

noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard

was the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the

sticky parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large

business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and possibly might be

found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than

he might have been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he

recognized among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who

probably had been "lent" by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted.

Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle.

With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from

twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or

two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilet" of

the executioner's victim. After this it was barked in its erect

position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of

vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case

now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the

axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the

work with the crosscut-saw.