“Well, throw it away, and come along; we ought to be getting back now.”
“Yes, so as to have time to go up to the museum first,” he replied, but he did not throw away his last find. That was tucked into a pill-box, with the promise that I should see it eat a live worm that night.
We turned back and took the side lane which would lead us round by the keeper’s cottage.
“Let’s see what Bob has got stuck up on the barn side,” said Mercer. “I daresay there’ll be something fresh. He always says he’ll save me all the good things he shoots, but he forgets and nails them on. Come on through the wood.”
“But we shall get our feet so wet,” I said, as Mercer jumped the ditch.
“That we won’t. It will be drier here.”
I followed him, and, knowing his way well, Mercer took me by a short cut among the trees, which brought us just to the back of the keeper’s cottage, where dozens of the supposed enemies of the game were gibbeted. Jays, hawks, owls, little falcons, shrikes, weasels, stoats, and polecats.
“There,” said Mercer, pointing, “look at that beautiful fresh jay. He might have let me—”
Mercer stopped short, for we heard Polly Hopley’s voice speaking loudly, evidently at the front of the cottage.
“I don’t want it, and I won’t have it. Give it to some one else.”