He wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old Hobden would turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before spring. The old man was as busy as a beaver.
Something laughed beneath a thorn, and Puck stole out, his finger on his lip.
‘Look!’ he whispered. ‘Along between the spindle trees. Ridley has been there this half-hour.’
The children followed his point, and saw Ridley the keeper in an old dry ditch, watching Hobden as a cat watches a mouse.
‘Huhh!’ cried Una. ‘Hobden always ’tends to his wires before breakfast. He puts his rabbits into the faggots he’s allowed to take home. He’ll tell us about ’em to-morrow.’
‘We had the same breed in my day,’ Sir Richard replied, and moved off quietly, Puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the close-trimmed beech stuff.
‘What did you do to them?’ said Dan, as they repassed Ridley’s terrible tree.
‘That!’ Sir Richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls.
‘Not he,’ said Puck. ‘There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.’
‘I—I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?’ He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He walked as though all the woods belonged to him. ‘I have often told my friends,’ he went on, ‘that Red William the King was not the only Norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.’