Between these two walls lay a very deep pool.
"Just the place for a heavy fish," reflected Arthur, and, even as he
thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in
order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink silently into the
depths.
Retiring carefully to one of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed
at the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat
in meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together.
Presently, however, struck by the beauty of the spot and its quiet,
only broken by the songs of many nesting birds, he stopped a while to
look around him. Above his head the branches of a great oak, now
clothing themselves with the most vivid green, formed a dome-like
roof, beneath the shade of which grew the softest moss, starred here
and there with primroses and violets. Outside the circle of its shadow
the brushwood of mingled hazel and ash-stubs rose thick and high,
ringing-in the little spot as with a wall, except where its depths
were pierced by the passage of a long green lane of limes that, unlike
the shrubberies, appeared to be kept in careful order, and of which
the arching boughs formed a perfect leafy tunnel.
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