Usually Mr Williams was glad to see the girls, and to let them play with the young partridges, but this afternoon he only nodded to them and went on smoking in silence. They were a little surprised, because it was such a lovely afternoon, with the sky bluer than any ocean, and the fields all glittering with the leaves of the root crops, or hidden away under the golden wheat. Here and there the reapers were already at work cutting the first of the oats and barley, and about a mile away they could see the chimneys of the great house shining in groups between the tree-tops.
The only dark spot was the thick and tangled pinewood, known as the Haunted Wood, into which Lord Barrington never allowed anybody besides himself to go. It was inside the Park, and round two sides of it ran the Park wall, with sharp iron spikes on the top; and round the other two sides there was a barbed-wire fence, with a small gate in it, heavily padlocked. For twenty years it had never been touched. When a tree fell over, it lay where it had fallen; between the trunks of the trees there had grown a jungle of undergrowth; and only Lord Barrington had the key of the gate.
Mr Williams was still sitting down, staring moodily in front of him, when Marian asked him what was the matter, and was he angry with them for coming?
"No, no, it's not that," he said, "but I've just got the push. His lordship has given me a month's notice. I'm got to quit and find a new job, after forty-two years here, man and boy."
Marian and Gwendolen stared at him in astonishment.
"Why, whatever have you been doing?" Gwendolen asked.
He took his pipe from his mouth and pointed to the Haunted Wood.
"See that wood there," he said, "the Haunted Wood? Well, last night one of these here dogs, he bolted into it, and I couldn't get him out, so I went in to hunt for him. I was only in there for about five minutes, but just as I was coming out I met his lordship. He stared at me as if I was a criminal in the dock, and give me a month's notice to leave his service.
"'You know my rules,' he says, 'and you've broken them. It's no good arguing,' he says, 'you've got to go.'"
Marian and Gwendolen felt very angry, angrier than they had ever felt before.