Then, peering through the tangle of brambles, she spied old Mr. Rabbit sitting on his broken-down doorstep with his arms folded and fast asleep.
The wall in which it had been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base.
The result was that, after some days, I came across an old dry well, the mouth of which was nearly hidden by brambles; and here, at the bottom, I discovered what I sought.
The points selected are, by preference, the low brambles dragging along the ground, keeping their dense verdure during the winter and crammed with dead leaves from the oaks hard by.
"'Mercy me!' exclaimed Old Mother Nature, throwing up her hands as she saw the tumble-down house almost hidden by the brambles and weeds. 'Can it be possible that any one really lives here?'
Barely a few dwarf plants could now be noticed, like those on the wild heaths of Scotland; then came the first tract of grayish sand and flint, with here and there a lentisk tree and brambles.
Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees--live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called--which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch.
We were roaming through a forest yesterday, looking for game, when I somehow got separated from the rest, lost my way, darkness came on, and wondering hither and thither in the vain effort to find my comrades, tumbling over logs and fallen trees, scratched and torn by brambles, almost eaten up by mosquitos, I thought I was having a dreadful time of it.