“Oh, yes. Splendid, rather! Hangman’s Wood long way—get morning very early,” replied the other.
The long, dark outline of the ill-omened covert loomed before them; and at sight of it Haviland could hardly restrain a wild paroxysm of laughter, as he remembered the last time they visited the place, and the awful scare they had put upon the unfortunate keeper. Just as they gained it, the moon in its last quarter arose above the tree tops.
“It’s awfully dark in here, Cetchy,” whispered Haviland, as they stood within the gloomy depths of the wood. “These trees are too thick. We can’t see a blessed bird.”
It was even as he had said. The light of the feeble moon hardly penetrated here, and the chill gloom and weird associations of the place began to take effect even upon their spirits. A fox barked in the further end of the covert, and ever and anon the doleful hooting of owls, both far and near, rang out upon the night, and now and again one of the ghostly birds would drop down almost into their faces, and skim along the ride on soft, noiseless pinions. The earthy moisture of the soil and undergrowth was as the odour of a charnel-house. Every now and then some sound—strange, mysterious, unaccountable—would cause them to stop short, and, with beating hearts, stand intently listening. Then they went on again.
They had secured no spoil; the tree tops were too thick to see the roosting birds. At last, as luck would have it—whether for good or ill we say not—they managed to glimpse a single pheasant through a gap against the sky. All of a quiver with excitement, Haviland pressed the trigger, and missed. Still the dim black ball up aloft never moved. Again he took careful aim, and this time it did move, for it came down from its perch with a resounding flapping of wings, and hit the earth with a hard thud, still flapping. In a moment the Zulu boy was upon it and had wrung its neck, but not before it had uttered a couple of raucous croaks that seemed, to the over-strained sense of its slayers, loud enough to be heard for miles in the midnight stillness.
“I’m glad we’ve got something at last, Cetchy,” whispered Haviland, as he examined the dead bird. “We’ll have to be contented with it, though, for time’s up. Come along, we must get back now.”
Bearing off their spoil in triumph, they had gained the centre of the wood—the spot, in fact, where the old tragedy had occurred, and close to that whereon they had so badly frightened the keeper. Suddenly Haviland felt a hand on his arm, heard a brief whisper:
“Stop! Something moving.”
At first he could hear nothing; then his ears detected a sound, and his nerves thrilled. As the other had said, it was something moving, and instinctively he realised that it was something heavier, more formidable than any of the light-footed denizens of an English wood. Somehow his mind reverted to the grim legend. What if it were true, and the strangled man actually did walk, with all the marks of his horrible and violent death upon him? In front, where the rides of the wood intersected each other, the moonlight streamed through in a broad patch, rendering blacker still the pitchy blackness beneath the trees beyond. The stillness and excitement, together with the gruesome associations of the place, had got upon their nerves even more than they knew. What if some awful apparition—appalling, horrible beyond words—were to emerge from yonder blackness, to stand forth in the ghostly moonlight, and petrify them with the unimaginable terrors of a visitant from beyond the grave? Haviland’s pulses seemed to stand still as the sounds drew nearer and nearer. A keeper’s? No. They were too quick, too heavy, too blundering, somehow. Then Anthony breathed one word:
“Dog!”