Inside the dug-out hollow below the sloping roof the ground was white with crumbs.
‘Crab,’ I said, after a good stare at the whole thing, ‘I don’t quite like the look of it.’
‘Why, what’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘All I can say is, I don’t like it. I wouldn’t go under the roof if I were you.’
‘Nonsense! Why should I chuck away the chance of a feed like this?’
Before I could object again he had jumped down and was busily engaged with the bread. My mouth watered. I could see no sign of danger. There was nothing to suggest a trap. Why should not I also enjoy the delicacies? I was on the very verge of following Crab’s example; another second and I should have been alongside of him, when suddenly, and without the slightest warning, thump! down came the wooden roof, and Crab was a prisoner beneath it. At the same instant there was a crash among the hazel-bushes, a sharp yelp, and a brown-faced, bare-legged boy, accompanied by a large mongrel, dashed down upon me.
I was off like a flash, and by a desperate effort gained the nearest tree—an ancient pollard oak—which stood quite by itself at some distance both from the hedge and the hazel-bushes. The dog bounded high against the rough trunk, but I was safely out of his reach, and, curling myself into the smallest possible compass, crouched in the gnarled top of the club-like head of the tree.
‘Watch him, Tige!’ shouted the boy, and the dog at once crouched silently at the foot of the tree, while his master walked to the trap. From my elevated position I could watch it all, and, what was more, see plainly an old sand-pit behind the hazel-bushes, with a tent at the bottom of it, two children playing outside, and a couple of ponies grazing near by.
Wrapping his hand in his cap, the boy cautiously seized hold of my poor friend. I, of course, supposed that he meant to make a captive of him, but, to my horror, the young fiend wrung the unhappy Crab’s neck, and marched off with him back to the camp.
‘Wot you got, Zeke?’ came a gruff voice from the tent. ‘A partridge?’