Crossing Llanvorda Park we enter Craigvorda woods, at once the most beautiful and picturesque of the many similar woods on the borders. The ground is mossy underfoot, the trees meet overhead, glossy green ferns pave the noble corridors, which have for pillars straight and sturdy firs and larch, and for a roof the heavy foliage of interwoven sycamore and oak. At intervals the chestnut too lifts its gigantic nosegay of pink and white and yellow flower-spikes, and near it, out of some craggy knoll, the "lady of the forest," the silver birch, bends tenderly over the masses of blue hyacinths below. "The shade is silent and dark and green, and the boughs so thickly are twined across, that little of the blue sky is seen between;" but there is no lack of blue underfoot, for the hyacinths seem to have claimed the wood as their own property, and shine like a shimmering sea of blue between the tree-stems, quite putting out of countenance with their blaze of colour the modest violet, growing by the side of the runnels leaping downward to join the noisy brook.
We crossed the Morda, a purling trout stream, out of which you may easily basket a score of trout in the spring; up a lane, the banks of which were crowded so thickly with spring flowers, starwort, and other snow-white flowers, deep-blue germander speedwells, red ragged robins, and wild geraniums, monkshood, daisies, dandelions, and buttercups, that the green of the leaves and grasses was quite absorbed and lost in the brighter hues; up and up, until our legs began to ache, and at last we came to the crest of the hill, in the hollow a few feet below which lay the tarn, gloomy enough, but weirdly beautiful. The water itself looked green from the prevailing colour of the rushes and flags, and the deep belt of green alders, which grew half in and half out of it all round.
"Look," I said, "there are two herons, a couple of wild-ducks, with their young brood just hatched, twenty or thirty coots and waterhens, and some black leaves sticking up out of the water, which are the things we are after."
"What do you mean?" asked A.
"They are the back fins of carp."
A.'s rods—he had two, as I had—were put together with remarkable quickness. I took it more leisurely, and watched him searching about for a place to cast his line in, with some amusement.
"I say, how are we to get at the water?" he cried.
"Wade." But this he was averse to doing. He found a log of wood, and pushing it out beyond the bushes, where it was very shallow, he took his stand upon it in a very wobbley state, with a rod in either hand. I took up a position a short distance from him, and we waited patiently for half an hour without a bite. Suddenly I heard a splash, and looking round, saw that A. had slipped off his perch, and was halfway up to his knees in water, with a broken rod and a most rueful expression on his face.
"I have lost such a beauty."
"Serves you right. You can't pitch a big carp out like you could a trout. This is the way—see."