Chapter III

Old Oliver trudged down the road from the little town on the hill, with his fairing under his arm, thinking of his old wife sitting in her chimney-corner, and of the old days when he bought the pretty young farm-servant her first fairing, in that same town and on that very same day in May, some five-and-forty years ago. Straight before him were the Cotswold hills, and on their slope he could see the spire of Highfield church, and further down and nearer was the great dark mass of Truerne wood, hiding the hamlet where he had lived all his life. The sight of the wood made him think of the owls, and he unconsciously quickened his pace, as if to make haste and see that all was right with them as yet.

Down the long sloping road he went, and then turning off by a bridle-path, passed through another wood--not his, and therefore no place for dallying in--and crossing the river by an old flood-beaten bridge, took his way through a wealth of buttercups that gilded his old boots with yellow dust, to the further side of the water-meadows, where his own beloved wood came down in gentle slopes to the valley. Evening was coming on and the light was subdued; all was quiet and peaceful unless a nightingale broke out suddenly in song from a thicket, or the voice of the chiff-chaff rang out from overhead. Over the bluebells the shadows were lengthening, and against their deep blue, as it mingled in the distance with the blue of the sky peeping through the branches, rose the straight and darkening stem of many an ancient tree. What a change from the noise and worry and ill-dealing and cruelty of the fair!

When he came to his own old oak he paused and listened; but no sound was heard but the song of the wood-wren in the higher foliage.

“‘Tis all right as yet,” he said to himself; “they’re not astir so early as this; but maybe they’ll be hooting when Pogson and the pigs come along later, and then they’re marked birds; the warrant ’ll be out against ’em. The Lord deliver them out of the hand of the Philistines,” said the old fellow, quite aloud. “I’ll get a bit of supper, and come and have a look presently”; and he went on up the ride.

Close behind him was the gamekeeper. Mr. McNab, finding that there were no spaniel-puppies at the fair, had no further reason to stay there; for he had a poor opinion of the people of those parts, and did not care to listen to their stupid talk, or to help them to drink bad beer. Moreover during his visit to the barber he had satisfied himself that his domains were really in danger of being invaded by unsportsmanlike clod-hoppers in search of owls; and the more he thought of it, the more impossible it seemed to have fellows like Pogson roaming about in his woods with firearms. It was bad enough to have pigs driven through your wood every fair-day, though that could not be helped where there was a right of way for man and beast; but he had reason to suspect Mr. Pogson of other still more objectionable practices, and at all times disliked the man as a noisy, bullying lout.

So he had left the fair soon after Oliver, only stopping at a shop in the outskirts of the town to buy a good-sized twist of strong cord. He did not stay to look at the view, or to sit on the bridge and watch the water, or to admire the bluebells when he came to Truerne wood. Mr. McNab was a man of a practical mind, and a swift walker; and he had nearly caught up Oliver when he arrived at the old oak-tree, so that he just heard the old fellow’s ejaculation about the Philistines, and then saw his smockfrock retreating up the ride. The Scotchman stopped and watched it disappear.

“Yon auld Oliver has mair gude sense,” he said to himself, “than a’ these blathering gowks o’ pigdrivers; and he kens his Bible too! A wee bit too saft--mair backbane, mair backbone! But he’s no sae doited as the rest!”

The sun was almost setting, but the owls in the old oak were still silent. “They’ll be hooting in an hour or twa,” he said, as Oliver had said it before him; and drawing the twist of cord from his pocket, he stepped aside among the bluebells to the oak-tree. Plenty of young ground ashes were shooting up among the flowers, and with the help of these, and of a low hazel bush or two, he contrived to fasten the cord in a pretty tight circle round the tree-trunk, at a distance of some half-dozen yards from it, and about a foot and a half from the ground. There being still plenty of cord, he looked about for a log of wood, and finding one not too heavy, he tied the cord round it, and hoisted it up on a low branch of the big tree, on the side nearest the ride, just balancing it at the junction of one gnarled bough with another, so that a strong pull at the string would easily bring it down. This done, he fastened the other end tightly down to his circle below, and then paused, with a face of extreme gravity, to contemplate his apparatus.

Suddenly his severe features relaxed. There had shot across his memory a certain scene, when as a bare-legged callant playing on his native braes, he had devised just such a booby-trap to catch another boy, with a view of securing for himself a certain nest in which eggs were about to be laid. The grim features of Mr. McNab relaxed, I say, and in his solitude in the wood he burst out into a hearty ringing laugh.

“At bairn’s wark in my auld age! And what wad the Dominie say? Wad I be for a crack wi’ the tawse, or the knuckle-end of the auld crab-stick at hame, eh!”

Mr. McNab lit his pipe, the better to resume his ordinary composure; and puffing at it with lips which now and then a convulsive movement almost compelled to laughter, he strode away through the wood to his own dwelling on the further side of it.