I looked in the direction he pointed out, and saw the leaves moving. Then there was a rustle, and the little brown and white animal leaped from bough to bough, till I saw it plainly on a great grey and green mossy bough of a beech tree, not thirty feet away, where it stood twisting and jerking its beautiful feathery tail from side to side, and then, as if scolding us, it began to make the sounds I had before heard—Chop, chop, chop, chop, wonderfully like the blows of an axe falling on wood.
“Wonder whether I could hit him,” cried Mercer, picking up a stone.
“No, no, don’t! I want to look at him.”
“There’s lots about here, and they get no end of the nuts in the autumn. But come along.”
We soon left the squirrel behind, and Mercer stopped again, in a shady part of the lane.
“Hear that,” he said, as a loud chizz chizz chizz came from a dry sandy spot, where the sun shone strongly.
“Yes, and I know what it is,” I cried triumphantly. “That’s a cricket escaped from the kitchen fireplace.”
Mercer laughed.
“It’s a cricket,” he said, “but it’s a field one. You don’t know what that is, though,” he continued, as a queer sound saluted my ears,—a low, dull whirring, rising and falling, sometimes nearer, sometimes distant, till it died right away.
“Now then, what is it?” he cried.