220
PARTISAN
R'EVIEW
done, he thoughtfully withdrew it. Straining to see into the darkness of
the shed they could just discern the close-lying egglike forms of the
hogs.
"Oink: oink," Robe grunted, in a voice so deep that Richard was
surprised.
Crooomphth,
a sleeping hog replied.
They crossed the stile and struck into the woods, using their un–
hardened feet somewhat delicately along the familiar path.
It
was as
thrilling cold and as vague and silent here as leaving a hot morning
and stepping into a springhouse, and the smell of dead leaves and decay–
ing wood and of the arising year was as keen as the coldness. A dogwood
dilated ahead of them, each separate blossom enlarging like an eye, and
swung behind, and deeply retired among the black trees ahead they
could see the shining of others in the first light, triumphal and sad,
lonesome as nebulae ; likewise blind clumps of unawakened laurel; and
now as the light became adequate they saw that the floor of the
woods was still the leathery color of last year's leaves, meagerly stitched
with green. In the deeper distances the woods were neutral as a photo–
graph, as they had been all winter, but nearer by, the trunks of the trees
were no longer black. Some were blackish, some were brownish, some
were gray and gray green and silver brown and silver green and now
the forms and varieties of bark, rugged, mosaic, deeply ribbed and
satin sleek, knobbled like lepers and fluted like columns of a temple,
became entirely distinct. Some of the twigs looked still as dark and
fragile as the middle of winter, many were knobbled and pimpled and
swollen as if they were about to break open and bleed, and many were
the color of bronze and some were the color of blood; on some there
were little buds like the nubbins of young deer and on others new leaves
as neatly fledged as the feathering ought to be for the arrows Richard
had never been able to make perfectly. They could see a long way
into the woods as the morning cleared and everywhere underfoot this
leather laid its flat musing waves and everywhere among the retreating
trees strayed sober clouds of evergreen and mild clouds of blossom and
the dreaming laurels, and everywhere, as deep into the stunned woods
as they could see, layer above unwavering layer, the young leaves led
like open shale; while, against their walking, apostolically, the trees
turned. The path among these winding, dancing trees, new to them
since late fall, was supple underfoot, the droning trees against which
they laid or slapped their hands felt as alive as the flanks of horses, the
air
was
all
one listening joy. While they approached the clearing each
held in mind a festal imagination of the plum tree, but it hung black,
all crazed elbows, in the widened light. From somewhere, however,
