Bang again! A cock pheasant came whirring up past us, rocketing high over the tops of the trees, and a second dose of shot, hopelessly too late, sent a shower of twigs scattering from the tree just over our heads, and made us cower the closer against the trunk.
Steps came trampling past beneath us, and the firing became fast and furious. Every living thing took cover, or, if it had wings, departed as fast as they would carry it. The racket did not last long, and, as we found out later, the bag was not a large one. The Hall’s new tenants were not good shots, and their new keeper, who had supplanted old Crump, did not know his business. As soon as the noise had died away we made the best of our way home, and found mother and Hazel, who had been lying close at home, extremely relieved to see us safe back once more.
Several times again before the winter the solitude of our coppice was invaded by the same party—the little stout man with the mutton-chop whiskers, his white-collared, pasty-faced son, and a tall keeper with a ginger beard. But after their first two visits none of the coppice people paid much attention to them beyond sitting tight in cover. The very pheasants—stupid fellows as they are—made jeering remarks about their inability to kill anything unless it happened to be fool enough to sit still to be fired at.
What did cause much more serious alarm was the rumour of a new and most dangerous enemy. The news came to us through a strange squirrel whom Rusty and I met one cold bright morning rummaging among the deep beech-leaves for a breakfast of mast. The poor fellow had a nasty wound at the back of his neck, and looked thin and miserable. He was so nervous that when he heard us coming he bolted wildly up a tree. We called to him, and, looking rather ashamed of himself, he came back and met us.
‘What’s up?’ inquired I. ‘We’re not going to eat you. Come down and finish your breakfast.’
‘Ugh! don’t talk of eating!’ he answered in trembling tones. ‘You wouldn’t if you’d been so nearly eaten as I was three days ago;’ and he showed us his wound.
‘Weasel?’ Rusty asked.
‘No—much worse.’
‘What, not a fox?’
‘I’m not quite fool enough to sit on the ground and let a fox catch me,’ retorted the stranger. ‘It was a wild-cat.’