To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passingof the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as itbattles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise andfall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy itsindividuality.On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towardsMellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeededeach other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence: "With the rose and the lilyAnd the daffodowndilly, The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go."The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of Mellstock parish with UpperMellstock and Lewgate, and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmedbirches with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm, allappeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled sovehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. Within the woody pass, at a levelanything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. The copse-wood forming the sides of thebower interlaced its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from thenorth-east flew along the channel with scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes.After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white surface of the lane revealeditself between the dark hedgerows like a ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused bytemporary accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side.The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the place of several bars, andresumed at a point it would have reached had its continuity been unbroken) now received a morepalpable check, in the shape of "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to Lower Mellstock, on the rightof the singer who had just emerged from the trees."Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no idea of seeing anythingmore than imagination pictured."Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?" came from the darkness."Ay, sure, Michael Mail.""Then why not stop for fellow-craters-going to thy own father's house too, as we be, and knowenus so well?"Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle, implying that the business of hismouth could not be checked at a moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendshi