The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspencopse. On reaching thecopse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow.

There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thickcopse came down to the water.

On the left our troops were close to acopse, in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.

'Thecopse, the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,' thought he.

They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk that led to thecopse; Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for conversation with a woman who was now more than usually insolent and disagreeable.

Every minute a fresh gun came into position until, before twilight, everycopse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle.

It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly plantedcopse of lilacs, laburnums, and acacias.

The Story Girl selected the spot for the grave, in a little corner behind the cherrycopse, where early violets enskied the grass in spring, and we boys dug the grave, making it "soft and narrow," as the heroine of the old ballad wanted hers made.

They cantered forward at as brisk a pace as Joe's charger could attain, and presently stopped in the littlecopse where he had left her in the morning.

The eyes of the Sagamore moved warily from islet to islet, andcopse tocopse, as the canoe proceeded; and, when a clearer sheet of water permitted, his keen vision was bent along the bald rocks and impending forests that frowned upon the narrow strait.

Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and saw, in the midst of a vastcopse, the dark-green branches of several pine-trees.

I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into acopse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint, fastened very artificially after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces.