Of the time that followed I will not speak. But for Walnut I should not have cared to live. As it was, I hardly took the trouble to eat, but sat and moped from day to day, until I grew thin and bony; my coat stared, and I looked like an old squirrel.
But time cures all sorrows, and happily for us, just as a squirrel’s life is shorter than a man’s, so much the more rapidly do his griefs pass away. Walnut grew from day to day, and became a strong, handsome fellow, well able to take care of himself. I was very proud and fond of him, and gradually his bright companionship did me good, and amid new scenes I began slowly to take a fresh interest in life.
Our new home was very near to the far end of the wood path, close to the other gate, which opened on to the road; the same road which ran past the Hall, across the brook, to the village beyond. As I have, I think, mentioned before, the new people at the Hall had closed this path, padlocked the gates, and posted notices forbidding anyone from using the short cut. This course caused intense dissatisfaction among the villagers, and more than once I saw a passing labourer shake his fist in silent anger as he tramped along the dusty road past the locked, iron-spiked gate.
It was not long before we began to realize the reason of this proceeding. One day the ginger-whiskered keeper appeared outside the gate with a cart loaded with coops. Unlocking the gate, he and another man carried in the coops one by one. All our curiosity aroused, Walnut and I followed cautiously, and watched them lay the coops down in an open glade, not far from our oak tree, open them, and let loose dozens of young pheasants, which scuttled about without attempting to fly, tame as so many barn-door fowls. Next came a proceeding which interested me far more. Taking two bags from the cart, the keeper proceeded to scatter a quantity of Indian corn and other food about in the grass, then, picking up the coops, he departed.
So soon as ever they were gone, down swooped Walnut and myself, and, sending the frightened young pheasants scuttling in every direction, set to work on the corn. It was nearly a year since I had tasted this delicacy, which Jack Fortescue used to give me as a treat in the old, quiet days at the Hall. The food was a godsend to us, for, as I have said, the supply of nuts, mast, and acorns, was of the shortest in our neighbourhood that season. I let my mother know, and she as well as Cob and my sister and their young ones were very soon on the spot. The pheasants got precious little of that meal, or of many subsequent ones which the keeper carefully brought day by day. However, they were not much to be pitied, for the supply of ants’ eggs was plentiful all over the coppice, and pheasants do better on ants’ eggs than on almost any artificial food they can be given.
I noticed that Rusty never troubled to come down to the pheasant food, though his wife and family of three sturdy sons regularly attended our daily free feed. I had my own suspicions, and these were confirmed when his wife told me that he was often away for whole days together. When she remonstrated with him he only laughed, and this made her seriously uneasy. Rusty had grown to be the largest and most powerful squirrel that I have ever seen in my life. No other in the wood could have stood up to him for a minute. He was also astonishingly brave and independent, and would venture across open fields for any distance.
One day he said to me:
‘Hulloa, Scud! why don’t you ever come to the Hall nowadays? I believe you’re scared. Don’t you want another taste of those cob-nuts?’
‘You don’t mean to say you go there?’ exclaimed I.