“If I might make a suggestion,” Terniloff observed diffidently, “most of the pheasants went into that gloomy-looking wood just across the marshes.”
There was a moment's rather curious silence. Dominey had turned and was looking towards the wood in question, as though fascinated by its almost sinister-like blackness and density. Middleton had dropped some game he was carrying and was muttering to himself.
“We call that the Black Wood,” Dominey said calmly, “and I am rather afraid that the pheasants who find their way there claim sanctuary. What do you think, Middleton?”
The old man turned his head slowly and looked at his master. Somehow or other, every scrap of colour seemed to have faded out of his bronzed face. His eyes were filled with that vague horror of the supernatural common amongst the peasant folk of various localities. His voice shook. The old fear was back again.
“You wouldn't put the beaters in there, Squire?” he faltered; “not that there's one of them would go.”
“Have we stumbled up against a local superstition?” the Duke enquired.
“That's not altogether local, your Grace,” Middleton replied, “as the Squire himself will tell you. I doubt whether there's a beater in all Norfolk would go through the Black Wood, if you paid him red gold for it.—Here, you lads.”
He turned to the beaters, who were standing waiting for instructions a few yards away. There were a dozen of them, stalwart men for the most part, clad in rough smocks and breeches and carrying thick sticks.
“There's one of the gentlemen here,” Middleton announced, addressing them, “who wants to know if you'd go through the Black Wood of Dominey for a sovereign apiece?—Watch their faces, your Grace.—Now then, lads?”
There was no possibility of any mistake. The very suggestion seemed to have taken the healthy sunburn from their cheeks. They fumbled with their sticks uneasily. One of them touched his hat and spoke to Dominey.