midday
The forest , the deep , vast forest of oak and ash and gum and ghostly sycamore ; the forest , tangled with a thousand binding vines and briers , wattled and laced with rank blue cane -- sure proof of a soil exhaustlessly rich -- this ancient forest still stood , mysterious and forbidding , all about the edges of the great plantation . Here and there a tall white stump , fire-blackened at its foot , stood , even in fields long cultivated , showing how laborious and slow had been the whittling away of this jungle , which even now continually encroached and claimed its own . The rim of the woods , marked white by the deadened trees where the axes of the laborers were reclaiming yet other acres as the years rolled by , now showed in the morning sun distinctly , making a frame for the rich and restful picture of the Big House and its lands . Now and again overhead there swung slowly an occasional great black bird , its shadow not yet falling straight on the sunlit ground , as it would at midday , when the puppies of the pack would begin their daily pastime of chasing it across the fields . This silent surrounding forest even yet held its ancient creatures -- the swift and graceful deer , the soft-footed panther , the shambling black bear , the wild hog , the wolf , all manner of furred creatures , great store of noble wild fowl -- all these thriving after the fecund fashion of this brooding land . It was a kingdom , this wild world , a realm in the wilderness ; a kingdom fit for a bold man to govern , a man such as might have ruled in days long gone by . And indeed the Big House and its scarcely measured acres kept well their master as they had for many years .