I told him I felt very forlorn now that my master had left me. My brother could not believe that I wanted to follow him; such a thing was quite beyond his comprehension.
When I assured him it was true, Rusty looked as solemn as if he was now certain that I had quite taken leave of my senses.
‘What! You want to go back and live in those burrows when you’ve got all the wood to roam in!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll be shot if I can understand you! Do you mean that you’d rather spend your time all alone in a place you can’t get out of than go foraging round with us all day as free as—as’—Rusty’s imagination failed him, and he paused—‘well—as free as a squirrel, for there’s no other creature in the woods that is as free as we are.’
I reminded him that I was used to being protected, and had never experienced anything but the utmost gentleness from Jack and his family.
‘Yes, I know. I’m sure he is quite different from those red-faced brutes who broke our nest down and killed poor father,’ replied Rusty. ‘And he has left us nuts enough for a month. But all his kind are so big and so dull. They can’t climb trees like us, or jump;’ and my brother made a splendid spring down to my side just to show what he could do. ‘It’s no kind of life for a squirrel. My brush, but I should have taken the first chance to run off and come back home!’
Then he gave a sudden low cry of warning, and instinctively I followed him as he bounded back into the thick of the hedge just as a hen sparrow-hawk stooped like a falling stone out of the blue above, reaching the grass by a tuft of gorse a little way out in the field. There was a sharp cry, cut short almost before it was uttered, and then the feathered robber rose again, bearing in her crooked talons the struggling form of a linnet. A few small feathers floated away through the still, warm air, and all was over. The hawk sailed away towards a distant tree with her meal tight clutched between her claws.
It was long since I had seen one of these everyday woodland tragedies, and it made me realize with a shock that now I had myself only to depend upon, with no strong human hand to aid me. Frightened and unhappy, I followed Rusty quietly back into the heart of the coppice, and that night saw me one of a furry ball of four, curled in a hole in the heart of the great beech.
CHAPTER VI
A NARROW ESCAPE
I did not forget my master and settle down to my old out-door life at once. Every morning for many days I visited the gate at the end of the wood-path, and sat there or in the hedge beside it, straining my eyes across the meadow in the hope that Jack might come back once more. But never a sign of him or Harry did I see, and though, as the leaves began to fall, it was quite easy to view the roof of the Hall across the shrubberies, no smoke rose from the tall, twisted red-brick chimney-stacks.