Crown and Sceptre: A West Country Story

by George Manville Fenn

He stood listening, for it seemed to him that a low harsh moan had come from out of the dark shady woodland near where he stood.

He listened, but there was no further sound, and then he looked round, puzzled for the moment as to where he was. But he recognised certain features in the dense piece of forest directly after, and found that he had during his musings wandered in and in among the trees till he was in the old wilderness, close to the great fallen tree where they had made the discovery of the broken way into the hole.

He turned angrily away, for the thought of the secret passage brought back his mental struggle, as to which course he ought to pursue, and flight being certainly the easiest, he was about to hurry off, when once more the low harsh moan smote his ear.

“Two boughs rubbing together,” he muttered, after listening for a repetition of the sound, recalling the while what peculiarly strange noises two fretting branches would make.

“But there’s no wind,” he said to himself; and directly after there came the sharp chirp of a bird, and then the low moan.

It was so unmistakably a cry of pain, that Fred took a few steps forward among the dense bushes, and then looked around.

There was nothing visible, but he was not surprised, for he was close now to the hidden hole down which he had fallen when he made his jump, and crushed through part of the touchwood trunk, and everywhere there was a dense thicket of undergrowth, through which, after another pause, he forced his way.

Nothing to see—nothing to hear; and he paused again, listening intently, and bending forward in the direction of the hidden opening, as the thought struck him that the cry might come from there.

Still, there was no further sound, and feeling convinced that he had hit upon the true source of the noise, and with a shiver of dread running through him as a dozen terrible suggestions offered themselves in connection with the sound and with Scarlett, he was about to force his way to the hole and drag away some of the broken branches which they had heaped there, and which he could now see were intact, and with the ferns and brambles and ivy growing luxuriantly, when a fresh moan met his ear, evidently from quite another direction.

It was with a feeling of relief that he turned from the way to the passage, and forcing his way on for some little distance, he paused again, and listened with almost a superstitious dread, for the sounds heard were in the midst of the gloomy wilderness, where the foot of man rarely trod, and appealed strongly to the superstitious part of the youth’s nature.