So near was it that I could distinguish the tracks of the hares worn in the short grass.

But if you take off your hat no one can distinguish you in a wheat-field, more particularly if your hair is light: nor even in a hedge.
Where the drain or furrow entered the wood was a wire-netting firmly fixed, and over it tall pitched palings, sharp at the top.

The wood was enclosed with a thick hawthorn hedge that looked impassable; but the keeper's footsteps, treading down the hedge-parsley and brushing aside the 'gicks,' guided me behind a bush where was a very convenient gap.
These signs and the smooth-worn bark of an ash against which it was needful to push proved that this quiet path was used somewhat frequently.
Inside the wood the grass and the bluebell leaves--the bloom past and ripening to seed--so hung over the trail that it was difficult to follow.

It wound about the ash stoles in the most circuitous manner--now to avoid the thistles, now a bramble thicket, or a hollow filled with nettles.

Then the ash poles were clothed with the glory of the woodbine--one mass of white and yellow wax-like flowers to a height of eight or nine feet, and forming a curtain of bloom from branch to branch.
After awhile I became aware that the trail was approaching the hill.