“Hist! Who’s that?” said a familiar voice out of the darkness. “Father?”
“No, my dear, it isn’t your father.”
“Oh, Mr Lomax, what shall I do? Father’s been over to Hastings to-day, and hasn’t come back. There’s a gang of poachers clearing the Long Spinney, and it will break his heart. I thought it was him come back. There—there they go again.”
For there were several reports of guns not very far away.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Lomax; “I’ve got plenty of fight in me, and I’m ready to charge down on them, but they’ll be too much for one.”
“I’ll come with you, and bring father’s gun.”
“But you mustn’t use it, my girl. If we could frighten them somehow. Come on, and let’s try. I know—we’ll all go close up and shout.”
“They won’t mind that,” said Polly; but we went on in the darkness so quickly and quietly, that we were soon alongside a black plantation of Scotch fir-trees, in time to hear two more shots, and the heavy thuds of falling bodies.
“Now, are you ready?” whispered Lomax.
“Yes,” we said, but at that moment a figure darted by us, and entered the black wood.