The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque,
that it was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-
time, scarce a crevice existing by which a ray could get down to
the ground. But in open places she could see well enough. Summer
was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam;
vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after showers
creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. The
plantations were always weird at this hour of eve--more spectral
far than in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and
more minute lineality. The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came
out like weak, lidless eyes; there were strange faces and figures
from expiring lights that had somehow wandered into the canopied
obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between the
trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat
faint cloven tongues.
But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and
she heeded these impressions but little.
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