"What a rum chap Haviland is!" said Laughton, the captain of the school,
as from the window of the prefects' room, he, with three or four others,
stood watching the subject of the remark, rapidly receding into
distance, for it was a half-holiday afternoon. "He and Cetchy have
become quite thick."
"I expect he finds him useful at egg-hunting," said Medlicott.
"Yes--and how about it being wrong form for us to go about with
juniors?" struck in Langley, a small prefect who had attained to that
dignity by reason of much "sapping," but was physically too weak to
sustain it adequately. "Haviland's never tired of jamming that down our
throats, but he doesn't practise what he preaches. Eh?"
"Well, Corbould major'll be a prefect himself next term," said
Medlicott.
"Yes, but how about the nigger, Medlicott? A nigger into the bargain.
Haviland's chum! I don't know how Haviland can stick him," rejoined the
other spitefully, for he loved not Haviland.
"I wish he'd chuck that confounded egg-hunting, at any rate for this
term," said Laughton. "He'll get himself reduced as sure as fate.
Nick's watching him like a cat does a mouse. He's got a down on him for
some reason or other--don't know what it can be--and the very next row
Haviland gets into he'll reduce him. That's an absolute cert."
"Haviland did say he'd chuck it," replied Medlicott. "But what's he to
do? He's a fellow who doesn't care for games--swears cricket's slow,
and football always makes him want to hit somebody."
"He's a rum card," rejoined Laughton. "Well, I'm going round to the
East field to do some bowling. I expect Clay'll be there. Coming,
Medlicott?"
"No. I don't care about bowling to Clay. He expects you to keep at it
all the time just because he's a master. Never will bowl to you. I
bar."
The two under discussion were speeding along--Haviland jubilant over
having obtained leave from call-over--thus being able to get very far
afield. He fancied Mr Sefton, the master of the week, had eyed him
rather curiously in granting it, but what did that matter? He had the
whole afternoon before him.
As they proceeded, he was instructing the other in various landmarks,
and other features of the country.
"Think you could find your way back all right, Cetchy?" he said, when
they had proceeded some distance, "if you were left alone, I mean?"
"Find way? Left alone? What do you mean?"
"Why sometimes, if you get chevvied by a keeper it's good strategy to
separate, and get back round about. It boggles the enemy and at worst
gives one of you a chance."
"Find way--ha!" chuckled Anthony. "Well, rather. All that tree--hill
over there--plenty church steeple. Fellows who can't find way here must
be thundering big fools."
"Quite right. I hope we shan't be put to it to-day, but it has saved
both of us before. Though as a rule, Cetchy, I never go out with
another fellow, except Corbould now and then. Much rather be alone--
besides, when there are two fellows together they get jawing at the
wrong time. Remember that, Cetchy. Once you're off the road don't say
a word more than you can help--and only that in a whisper."
The other nodded.
"I know," he said.
"One time I had an awful narrow squeak," pursued Haviland. "It was in
Needham's Copse, the very place Finch and Harris were swished for going
through. There's a dry ditch just inside where you can nearly always
find a nightingale's nest. I'd just taken one, and was starting to get
back, when I heard something and dropped down like a shot to listen.
Would you believe it, Cetchy, there was a beast of a keeper with a brown
retriever dog squatting against the hedge on the other side! It was
higher than where I was lying, and I could see them against the sky, but
they couldn't see me, and fortunately the hedge was pretty thick. The
wonder was the dog didn't sniff me out, but he didn't. It was lively, I
can tell you, for nearly an hour I had to squat there hardly able to
breathe for fear of being heard. At last they cleared out and so did I.
I was late for call-over of course, but Clay--it was his week--only
gave me a hundred lines--said I looked so jolly dirty that I must have
been running hard. He's a good chap, Clay, and a bit of a sportsman,
although he is such a peppery devil. Well, Cetchy, you see if there had
been two of us, one would have been bound to make a row, and then--what
with the dog we couldn't have got clear. That would have meant a
swishing, for I wasn't a prefect then."
With similar narratives did Haviland beguile the way and instruct his
companion, therein however strictly practising what he preached, in that
he kept them for such times as they should be upon the Queen's highway,
or pursuing a legitimate path.
So far, they had found plenty of spoil, but mostly of the commoner sorts
and not worth taking--at least not from Haviland's point of view--all of
whose instincts as a sportsman were against wanton destruction.
"Why don't you begin collecting, Cetchy?" he said, as, seated on a
stile, they were taking a rest and a look round. "I should have thought
it was just the sort of thing you'd take to kindly."
"Yes. I think I will."
"That's right. We'll start you with all we take to-day, except one or
two of the better sorts, and those we'll halve. What have we got
already? Five butcher-bird's, four nightingale's, and five bullfinch's,
but I believe those are too hard-set to be any good. Hallo!" looking
up, "I believe that was a drop of rain."
The sky, which was cloudy when they started, had now become overcast,
and a few large drops fell around them. Little enough they minded that
though.
"Are you afraid of ghosts, Cetchy?" said Haviland.
"Ghosts? No--why?"
"See that wood over there? Well, that's Hangman's Wood, and we're going
through that. It's one of the very best nesting grounds in the whole
country--it's too far away, you see, for our fellows to get at unless
they get leave from call-over, which they precious seldom can."
He pointed to a line of dark wood about three-quarters of a mile away,
of irregular shape and some fifty acres in extent. It seemed to have
been laid out at different times, for about a third of it was a larch
plantation, the lighter green of which presented a marked contrast to
the dark firs which constituted the bulk of the larger portion.
"It's haunted," he went on. "Years and years ago they found a man
hanging from a bough right in the middle of it. The chap was one of the
keepers, but they never could make out exactly whether he had scragged
himself, or whether it was done by some fellows he'd caught poaching.
Anyway the yarn goes that they hung two or three on suspicion, and it's
quite likely, for in those days they managed things pretty much as they
seem to do in your country, eh, Cetchy--hang a chap first and try him
afterwards?"
"That's what Nick does," said the Zulu boy with a grin.
Haviland laughed.
"By Jove, you're right, Cetchy. You've taken the length of Nick's foot
and no mistake. Well, you see now why they call the place Hangman's
Wood, but that isn't all. They say the chap walks--his ghost, you
know--just as they found him hanging--all black in the face, with his
eyes starting out of his head, and round his neck a bit of the rope that
hung him. By the way, that would be a nice sort of thing for us to meet
stalking down the sides of the wood when we were in there, eh, Cetchy?"
The other made no reply. Wide-eyed, he was taking in every word of the
story. Haviland went on.
"It sounds like a lot of humbug, but the fact remains that more than one
of the keepers has met with a mortal scare in that very place, and I've
even heard of one chucking up his billet rather than go into the wood
anywhere near dusk even, and the rum thing about it too is that it never
gets poached: and you'd think if there was a safe place to poach that'd
be it. Yet it doesn't. Come on now. I got a lot out of it the season
before last, and we ought to get something good to-day."
Keeping well under cover of the hedges the two moved quickly along.
Then, as they neared the wood, with a "whirr" that made both start, away
went a cock-pheasant from the hedge-row they were following--springing
right from under their feet. Another and another, and yet another
winging away in straight powerful flight, uttering a loud alarmed
cackle, and below, the white scuts of rabbits scampering for the burrows
in the dry ditch which skirted the covert.
"Confound those beastly birds! What a row they kick up!" whispered
Haviland wrathfully as he watched the brilliantly plumaged cocks
disappearing among the dark tree tops in front. "Come along, though. I
expect it's all right."
"There you are," he went on disgustedly, as they stood in the ride
formed by the enclosing hedge of the first line of trees. "`Trespassers
will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.' Nice free
country this, eh, Cetchy?"
The notice board, nailed some seven or eight feet from the ground,
stared them in the face. But Haviland was used to such.
Cautiously, noiselessly, they stole in and out among the trees, one eye
and ear keenly alert for that which they sought, the other for
indication of possible human, and therefore hostile, presence. The
shower had ceased, but the odour of newly watered herbage hung moist
upon the air, mingling with the scent of the firs, and the fungus-like
exhalations of rotten and mouldering wood. A semi-twilight prevailed,
the effect of the heavy foliage, and the cloud-veiled and lowering sky--
and the ghostly silence was emphasised rather than disturbed every now
and then by the sudden flap-flap of a wood-pigeon's wings, or the
stealthy rustle in the undergrowth as a rabbit or pheasant scuttled
away.
"Look, Cetchy," whispered Haviland. "This is the place where they found
the chap hanging."
Right in the heart of the wood they were, and at this spot two ridges
intersected each other. A great oak limb reached across this point like
a huge natural gallows beam.
"The fellow who found him," went on Haviland, pointing at this, "did so
by accident. He was coming along the ride here in the dark, and the
chap's legs--the chap who was hanging, you know--sort of kicked him in
the face as he walked underneath that bough. Then he looked up and saw
what it was. Ugh! I say, Cetchy, supposing that sort of thing was to
happen to you or me! Think we'd get in a funk, eh?"
The Zulu boy, coming of a race which is intensely susceptible to
superstitious fears, shook his head, and muttered something in his own
tongue. The drear and dismal aspect of the place and its gruesome
legend impressed him. He did not like it at all, but would not own as
much. If Haviland, to whom he looked up as something of a god, was not
afraid, why should he be? Haviland, moved by some spirit of mischief,
went on, sinking his voice to a still more impressive whisper:
"Supposing we were to see the ghost now, Cetchy, looking just as they
say it walks--black in the face, and with its eyes and tongue all
bulging out of its head, and the bit of rope dangling from its neck!
Think we should get in a beastly funk, eh? There, just coming out from
under those dark firs--can't you imagine it?"
For answer the other started violently, and uttered a scared
ejaculation. Even Haviland's nerves were not entirely proof against the
interruption, coming when it did. Something had happened to startle
them both.