“Confound the scoundrels!” cried Sir John. “What an idiot you must have been!”
“Yes, Sir John, I was,” said the keeper, calmly; “but they won’t have more than finished, and they’ve got to get home. I may be too many for them yet.”
Hastily summoning the party on his left, the keeper led them to the weary, cramped party on his right.
“This way; quick!” he said; and the sluggish blood began to flow once more with the excitement, as he led them rapidly along the meadow, right up the fir slope through the trees, and out into the lane on the other side.
Here he paused and listened for a few moments, and then started off once more to where another clump of firs made the aspect of the night more dark.
Beneath the trees it was blacker, but the keeper well knew his way, and at the end of a few minutes he had spread out his forces some fifteen yards apart, with a whispered word to be on the alert.
“They’re sure to come through here,” he whispered, “Down on the first man you see. We shall hear you, and will come and help.”
General like, the keeper had selected the middle of the line for himself, and placed the trustiest men near where he believed that the poachers would come, Rolph being on his right, the major and Sir John upon his left.
“They won’t come—it’s all a hoax,” said Sir John, who was tired of waiting, and the words were hardly out of his lips before the mastiff uttered a muttered growl, and directly after there was the tramp of feet over the pine needles which, as it came nearer, told plainly of there being a strongish gang at work.
Sir John’s party kept perfectly quiet, save that a couple of the men began to close up so as to be ready when the signal was given, while apparently quite free from apprehension, the poachers came on talking in a low voice, till they were close upon Sir John, when the keeper gave a shrill whistle, sprang up, and shouted to his men.