1 He strode over the low brambles and bracken, leaving a trail through the fern.
2 She plunged with utter mournfulness in his track through the fern, and came to a huge holly hedge.
3 Within was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting their old supremacy.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 1: 6 The Figure against the Sky 4 Thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, where more mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 2: 2 The People at Blooms-End Make Ready 5 Her lips were quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously searching to hide her weakness.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 2: 2 The People at Blooms-End Make Ready 6 It was a stagnant, warm, and misty night, full of all the heavy perfumes of new vegetation not yet dried by hot sun, and among these particularly the scent of the fern.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 3: 7 The Morning and the Evening of a Day 7 Wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among the furze and fern.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 3: 8 A New Force Disturbs the Current 8 As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and fern.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 3: 8 A New Force Disturbs the Current 9 The brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round the margin, and the grass was unbroken.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 3 She Goes Out to Battle against Depression 10 A green cattletrack skirted the spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path Eustacia followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 3 She Goes Out to Battle against Depression 11 Eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified, brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 3 She Goes Out to Battle against Depression 12 Wildeve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and furze, Eustacia slowly walking on.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 3 She Goes Out to Battle against Depression 13 As soon as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the dryest fern.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 7 The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends 14 or whom he could hold entranced before a ledge of granite thrusting up through the fern while he unrolled the huge panorama of the ice age, and the long dim stretches of succeeding time.
15 Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove.