the clever, cunning bird had glided from its shelter to another
cover further off.

After dinner was over and Domville had brought back the tin plates
and pannikins from the creek where he had washed them up, pipes were
lighted, and a few minutes smoking served to rest and refresh the
men, who had been working since their six o'clock breakfast. The
daylight hours were too precious however to be wasted in smoking.
Trew and Domville would not have had that comfortable nest-egg
standing in their name at the bank in Christchurch, if they had
spent much time over their pipes; so after a very short "spell" they
got up from the fallen log of wood which had served them for a
bench, and suggested that F--- should accompany them back to where
their work lay. "You don't mind being left?" asked F---. "Certainly
not," replied I. "I have got the dogs for company, and a book in my
pocket. I daresay I shall not read much, however, for it is so
beautiful to sit here and watch the changing lights and shadows."

And so it was, most beautiful and thoroughly delightful. I sat on
the short sweet grass, which springs upon the rich loam of fallen
leaves the moment sunlight is admitted into the heart of a bush. No
one plants it; probably the birds carry the seeds; yet it grows
freely after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green
sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to
cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with
luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows
almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. I was so still and
silent that innumerable forest birds came about me. A wood pigeon
alighted on a branch close by, and sat preening her radiant plumage
in a bath of golden sunlight. The profound stillness was stirred