ABSTRACT
Early on the following morning Orlando left Winchester; but it was between three and four o’clock before he arrived at that part of the New Forest which is near Christchurch, and the frost, now set in with great severity, had made the roads very difficult for an horse, especially the way which he was directed to pursue, through the forest to the residence of Mrs. Fleming. – It was a deep, hollow road, only wide enough for waggons, and was in some places shaded by hazle and other brush-wood; in others, by old beech and oaks, whose roots wreathed about the bank, intermingled with ivy, holly, and evergreen fern, almost the only plants that appeared in a state of vegetation, unless the pale and sallow misletoe, which here and there partially tinted with faint green the old trees above them.
