“Yes. I think I will.”
“That’s right. We’ll start you with all we take to-day, except one or two of the better sorts, and those we’ll halve. What have we got already? Five butcher-bird’s, four nightingale’s, and five bullfinch’s, but I believe those are too hard-set to be any good. Hallo!” looking up, “I believe that was a drop of rain.”
The sky, which was cloudy when they started, had now become overcast, and a few large drops fell around them. Little enough they minded that though.
“Are you afraid of ghosts, Cetchy?” said Haviland.
“Ghosts? No—why?”
“See that wood over there? Well, that’s Hangman’s Wood, and we’re going through that. It’s one of the very best nesting grounds in the whole country—it’s too far away, you see, for our fellows to get at unless they get leave from call-over, which they precious seldom can.”
He pointed to a line of dark wood about three-quarters of a mile away, of irregular shape and some fifty acres in extent. It seemed to have been laid out at different times, for about a third of it was a larch plantation, the lighter green of which presented a marked contrast to the dark firs which constituted the bulk of the larger portion.
“It’s haunted,” he went on. “Years and years ago they found a man hanging from a bough right in the middle of it. The chap was one of the keepers, but they never could make out exactly whether he had scragged himself, or whether it was done by some fellows he’d caught poaching. Anyway the yarn goes that they hung two or three on suspicion, and it’s quite likely, for in those days they managed things pretty much as they seem to do in your country, eh, Cetchy—hang a chap first and try him afterwards?”
“That’s what Nick does,” said the Zulu boy with a grin.
Haviland laughed.