The other saw the force of this, and, with a threat and a sly cuff, acted upon it, and slunk away to give the alarm to the rest. Half an hour later Smithson and Anthony were forgathering under a hedge, talking over their escape.
“Well, you are no end of a brick, Cetchy,” said the former. “Why, they’ll make you cock chief of your tribe one of these days, I should think.”
“Ha—ha—ha!” chuckled the other. “Jarnley hurt more’n we hurt. All of ’em hurt. Ha—ha—ha!”
“Well, you got me out of it with those beasts. I say, Cetchy, old chap, I’m expecting a hamper next week, and won’t we have a blow out then!” he added, in a burst of gratitude and admiration.
“Hamper? What’s that?”
“Why, a basket of tuck. Grub, you know, from home. No end of good things.”
“Ha! All right,” said the other with a jolly laugh.
That day Haviland was making the most of his time and his solitary ramble. His collecting boxes were fairly well filled; among other specimens he had hit upon a grasshopper warbler’s nest, whose existence he suspected, containing five eggs, beautifully fresh and thus easily blown, likewise a sedge-warbler’s, hung cuplike, among the bulrushes of a reedy pond. The spoils of two wheatears, extracted with some difficulty from a deep burrow on the slope of Sidbury Down, had also fallen to his lot, and now, stretched on the springy turf on the summit of that eminence, he was enjoying a well-earned rest, thoroughly contented with himself and all the world. And what a view lay outstretched beneath and around—a fair, rolling champaign, green meadow and darker wood—here and there the shining surface of a pond: farm buildings too, picturesque with their red roofs and yellow corn-stacks, nestling among hanging elms noisy with the cawing of restless rooks, and the shrill whimsical chatter of jackdaws. The bark of a sheepdog, and the glad melodious shout of the cuckoo here and there, were borne upward on the still air—and far away over this beautiful landscape the brown high-pitched roofs of Saint Kirwin’s, conveying a sort of monastic suggestion in its surroundings of field and wood.
Haviland had been making the most of his day—therefore this was his fourth expedition, and it was now late afternoon. His watch marked ten minutes past five, and chapel was at six. There was plenty of time, but he thought he would take it easy going back. So, having allowed himself another five minutes’ rest, he took a final look around, and started to come down.