no respect for Weekes the little farmer. At last they had disappeared
down the ride, and after sitting a while longer, listening to the
sibilant notes of the wood-wren overhead, and watching the squirrels and
the nuthatches who were fellow-owners of the tree opposite to him, he
rose with something of a sigh,--for he was unwilling to exchange the
quiet wood for the noise and worry of the fair,--and stepped into the
bridle-path to set out on his walk.
“Are ye ganging to the fair, Oliver, ye lonesome auld dog?” said a grave
but friendly voice in a Scotch accent. It was the voice of Mr. McNab the
keeper, who without his gun, and in his best velveteen, was on his way
to look out for a spaniel-puppy or two to fill vacant places.
“Ay,” said Oliver simply, and they walked on side by side; Mr. McNab’s
serious gray eyes glancing here and there through the wood, and Oliver’s
earnest and rather wistful gaze kept steadily on the bluebells at his
feet, as was his wont when walking. Neither of them was a man of many
words or many friends; nor had they spoken to each other half a dozen
times a year since the Scotchman came into the neighbourhood. Yet each
of them felt, as they went along, that he had a reasonable man beside
him.
II.
It was high tide at Northstow fair: the broad, sloping street was
crowded with pens of sheep and pigs, and resounded with the noises of
oppressed animals, with the loud voices of their tyrants, and with the
hideous braying of the organs which of late years have added new
attractions to the merry-go-rounds. Old Oliver, soon wearied of the
crowd and the hubbub, had bought his wife’s new shawl early, and was
about to turn his steps homewards, when it occurred to him that it would
be as well, if circumstances were favourable, to get a comfortable shave
before leaving.
The Northstow barber had a double shop, one window of which was
decorated with his own wigs and perfumery, while the other showed caps
and bonnets, and was the domain of the milliner, his wife. As Oliver
passed this latter window, and was about to step into the shop, his eye
caught the well-known form of an owl--a young one, perched in an uneasy
attitude on a lady’s hat. He stopped to look at it, and then discovered
a placard, conspicuously placed just underneath the hat, and bearing the
following inscription:
Wanted at once, by a London firm,
ONE THOUSAND OWLS![7]
The old fellow stood rooted to the pavement, spelling out this placard
again and again. What could it mean? and what the owlet on the lady’s
hat? As he lingered, two men came up behind him, and there jarred
suddenly on his senses the bud coarse voice of Mr. Pogson, already a
little thickened by frequent glasses of ale and brandy. “Wanted, one
thousand howls!” spelt out Mr. Pogson, slowly. “How much a-piece, now?
There be scores on ’em in Truerne, be’nt there, Oliver, eh?”
“Ay, there be brown uns in the wood, and white uns in my barn, and in
Highfield church tower,” said the feeble voice of Mr. Weekes the farmer.
At this moment the barber, relieved for a moment from his duties, came
out on his doorstep to enjoy the cheering sights and sounds of the fair.
“Good day, Mr. Pogson,” he said. “How’s the pigs? Coming in for a shave?
Low prices in pigs to-day, so I hear tell. Ah, you’re looking at the
notice? My wife brought it down from town yesterday. There’s a chance
for making money now!”
“What do they want ’em for?” said Mr. Weekes.
“What do they give for ’em, you mean,” said Mr. Pogson with some
contempt.
“What do they want ’em for?” answered the barber, shirking Mr. Pogson’s
question. “Why you haven’t got any pretty daughters, Mr. Weekes, or
you’d know that by this time. Look at that there owl on the bonnet! Why,
bless you, ’tis all birds now with the ladies in London--and in the
country too for the matter o’ that. Birds on their hats, and birds on
their dresses; and a very pretty taste too, in my opinion. What’s
prettier, now, than birds? Think of their songs, Mr. Pogson, and all
their pretty ways! Why when you sees ’em a fluttering about on the
ladies’ hats in town, you could a’most believe as you was out in the
country seeing the little creeters a-flying round you and singing! And
now it’s all owls, I take it. Such softness o’ feathers, you see, such
wings, such----”
“But what’ll they pay for ’em?” asked Pogson impatiently, tired of the
barber’s talk.
“Fancy prices, sir, fancy prices,” said the barber; “why there’s a
fortun’ in that placard! There’s birds o’ paradise selling in town--so
my wife tells me--for fifty guineas a-piece, and there’s kingfishers and
woodpeckers fetching a mint o’ money. I tell you even blackbirds and
such like brings in something, for they dodges ’em up with other birds’
wings, or dyes ’em red and green, as pretty as can be. And now here’s a
run on owls, you see; can’t get enough of ’em. Half-a-sovereign a-piece
for the best ones, I think it was she told me. If pigs is down, Mr.
Pogson, why owls is up, you see. Want a shave then? Come along,
gentlemen, I’m free.”
“There be scores on ’em in Truerne wood,” said the pigdealer again to
Weekes, as he preceded him into the shop; but catching sight of Oliver,
who had shrunk away from the pair, and stood at a little distance
riveted by the barber’s speech, Mr. Pogson added, “There’s that old tree
by the ride: Oliver’s armchair, the Highfield folks calls it; there’s
owls there now, and young ’uns as well, I’ll be bound. Ain’t there now,
old soft-head?” And he made a playful cut at Oliver with his sapling as
he went up the steps.
The old man was seriously alarmed. That these two men would be ready to
meddle in the wood for the sake of a few guineas, or even a few
shillings, if they had the chance, he knew very well; and the fact of
the placard being there on fair-day was quite enough to set all the
gun-owners in the neighbourhood owl-hunting. As he turned away from the
window, he caught sight of the tall form of Mr. McNab sauntering through
the fair, and regarding its various follies much as a grown-up man looks
at the frolic of a pack of children just let out of school. He went
after him quickly, and touched him on the arm.
“Mr. McNab! Mr. McNab!” said he, with earnest and imploring eyes,
“there’s mischief up there; there’s mischief in the barber’s shop.
There’s a placard out for a thousand owls, and they’re going to shoot
‘em in Truerne wood!”
“They might do waur,” said the keeper, not at all taken aback.
“‘Tis hard as Lunnon folk can’t leave us alone,” continued Oliver with a
rueful face. “They’ll cut the wood down next and burn it for charcoal;
I’ve heard talk on it afore now. But I’ll be in my grave before then, if
so be as my prayers be granted.”
“They winna do that,” said the keeper; “dinna fash your auld head with
sic notions. And we maunna hae the owls killed oot either, or we’ll be
owerrun with rats in a year or twa. When the cat’s awa--ye ken. But what
for is a’ this about owls, I wonder? Are they gaun clean doited in
Lunnon then?”
And leaving Oliver, Mr. McNab walked up to the barber’s shop, and after
looking at the milliner’s window, he went in, and did not come out again
while Oliver remained within sight.
The old fellow waited a while, and walked about the fair; but he saw no
more of McNab, and had to turn his face homewards without a word of
reassurance. As he passed through the narrow passage, thronged with
hard-faced men and boys, which divided the pens of crowded pigs and
sheep, it made him wince a little to see Mr. Pogson, his ruddy face
still ruddier, and his sunken little eyes sparkling with drink and with
unwonted expectations of wealth, cutting at the hind-quarters of his
newly-bought pigs with the sapling, shouting in a hard voice to greasy
friends, and looking at every one who came near him as if they had
better mind what they were about. For old Oliver he had a profound
contempt; and as the old man passed him, he caught the pig that was
nearest him at the moment such a cut with his switch, that its squeaks
resounded through the street; it tried to escape over the backs of its
fellows, who all with a loud chorus of squeaking rushed to the further
side of the pen. Which so pleased Mr. Pogson that he turned to the old
man with a wink, as if to say, “Now you see the proper way to treat
animals.” But Oliver had passed on quickly.
III.
Old Oliver trudged down the road from the little town on the hill, with
his fairing under his arm, thinking of his old wife sitting in her
chimney-corner, and of the old days when he bought the pretty young
farm-servant her first fairing, in that same town and on that very same
day in May, some five-and-forty years ago. Straight before him were the
Cotswold hills, and on their slope he could see the spire of Highfield
church, and further down and nearer was the great dark mass of Truerne
wood, hiding the hamlet where he had lived all his life. The sight of
the wood made him think of the owls, and he unconsciously quickened his
pace, as if to make haste and see that all was right with them as yet.
Down the long sloping road he went, and then turning off by a
bridle-path, passed through another wood--not his, and therefore no
place for dallying in--and crossing the river by an old flood-beaten
bridge, took his way through a wealth of buttercups that gilded his old
boots with yellow dust, to the further side of the water-meadows, where
his own beloved wood came down in gentle slopes to the valley. Evening
was coming on and the light was subdued; all was quiet and peaceful
unless a nightingale broke out suddenly in song from a thicket, or the
voice of the chiff-chaff rang out from overhead. Over the bluebells the
shadows were lengthening, and against their deep blue, as it mingled in
the distance with the blue of the sky peeping through the branches, rose
the straight and darkening stem of many an ancient tree. What a change
from the noise and worry and ill-dealing and cruelty of the fair!
When he came to his own old oak he paused and listened; but no sound
was heard but the song of the wood-wren in the higher foliage.
“‘Tis all right as yet,” he said to himself; “they’re not astir so early
as this; but maybe they’ll be hooting when Pogson and the pigs come
along later, and then they’re marked birds; the warrant ’ll be out
against ’em. The Lord deliver them out of the hand of the Philistines,”
said the old fellow, quite aloud. “I’ll get a bit of supper, and come
and have a look presently”; and he went on up the ride.
Close behind him was the gamekeeper. Mr. McNab, finding that there were
no spaniel-puppies at the fair, had no further reason to stay there; for
he had a poor opinion of the people of those parts, and did not care to
listen to their stupid talk, or to help them to drink bad beer. Moreover
during his visit to the barber he had satisfied himself that his domains
were really in danger of being invaded by unsportsmanlike clod-hoppers
in search of owls; and the more he thought of it, the more impossible it
seemed to have fellows like Pogson roaming about in his woods with
firearms. It was bad enough to have pigs driven through your wood every
fair-day, though that could not be helped where there was a right of way
for man and beast; but he had reason to suspect Mr. Pogson of other
still more objectionable practices, and at all times disliked the man as
a noisy, bullying lout.
So he had left the fair soon after Oliver, only stopping at a shop in
the outskirts of the town to buy a good-sized twist of strong cord. He
did not stay to look at the view, or to sit on the bridge and watch the
water, or to admire the bluebells when he came to Truerne wood. Mr.
McNab was a man of a practical mind, and a swift walker; and he had
nearly caught up Oliver when he arrived at the old oak-tree, so that he
just heard the old fellow’s ejaculation about the Philistines, and then
saw his smockfrock retreating up the ride. The Scotchman stopped and
watched it disappear.
“Yon auld Oliver has mair gude sense,” he said to himself, “than a’
these blathering gowks o’ pigdrivers; and he kens his Bible too! A wee
bit too saft--mair backbane, mair backbone! But he’s no sae doited as
the rest!”
The sun was almost setting, but the owls in the old oak were still
silent. “They’ll be hooting in an hour or twa,” he said, as Oliver had
said it before him; and drawing the twist of cord from his pocket, he
stepped aside among the bluebells to the oak-tree. Plenty of young
ground ashes were shooting up among the flowers, and with the help of
these, and of a low hazel bush or two, he contrived to fasten the cord
in a pretty tight circle round the tree-trunk, at a distance of some
half-dozen yards from it, and about a foot and a half from the ground.
There being still plenty of cord, he looked about for a log of wood, and
finding one not too heavy, he tied the cord round it, and hoisted it up
on a low branch of the big tree, on the side nearest the ride, just
balancing it at the junction of one gnarled bough with another, so that
a strong pull at the string would easily bring it down. This done, he
fastened the other end tightly down to his circle below, and then
paused, with a face of extreme gravity, to contemplate his apparatus.
Suddenly his severe features relaxed. There had shot across his memory
a certain scene, when as a bare-legged callant playing on his native
braes, he had devised just such a booby-trap to catch another boy, with
a view of securing for himself a certain nest in which eggs were about
to be laid. The grim features of Mr. McNab relaxed, I say, and in his
solitude in the wood he burst out into a hearty ringing laugh.
“At bairn’s wark in my auld age! And what wad the Dominie say? Wad I be
for a crack wi’ the tawse, or the knuckle-end of the auld crab-stick at
hame, eh!”
Mr. McNab lit his pipe, the better to resume his ordinary composure; and
puffing at it with lips which now and then a convulsive movement almost
compelled to laughter, he strode away through the wood to his own
dwelling on the further side of it.
IV.
And now the wood was left once more in profound peace. Since old Oliver
passed through it the shadows had grown still longer, and from the west
there now came a flush of sunset through the boughs, turning the blue
carpet into one of deeper purple; while against the fading light the
great tree-trunks stood up solemnly, slowly blackening as their shadows
died away. Here and there a wood-pigeon broke the stillness in the
boughs, or a nightingale broke out into a flash of song, and ceased
again as suddenly; but the owls in the old tree began to bestir
themselves in soft silence, and reserved their hootings until they
should have procured a meal for the downy nestlings in the deep warm
hole. But beware, O ye owls and owlets, for the Philistines are at hand,
and the warrant of the ladies is out against you!
As the last hues of sunset died away on the Cotswold hills there came
through the wood unlucky little Mr. Weekes; small in person and small
in acres; discontented with his dealings at the fair, and with things in
general, and ready for any project that might put a pound or two into
his pocket without actually endangering his limbs or his liberty. As he
passed the great oak, a large creature flew noiselessly over his head in
the direction of the tree, and woke up Mr. Weekes’ memory, which had
been halting in the slough of his discontent.
“Ah, the owls!” he thought. “Half-a-guinea a-piece, did he say? Well, it
might be, if there’s a run on ’em; and that fellow Pogson said he was
coming here first thing to-morrow morning to shoot ’em; but I’ll be even
with the prosperous fat brute.”
Mr. Weekes thought of the morning’s pig-driving, into which he had been
compelled by Pogson’s superior force of character; of the two ribs of
his wife’s umbrella which he had broken on the back of one wayward
squeaker; and of the long detour he had taken when leaving Northstow, to
avoid falling again in with the pig-driver, and being once more driven
to drive.
So he went home to his rickety little homestead beyond the wood, and
reached down his old gun from its place above the chimney-piece; only
yielding to the injunctions of his wife that he must eat a bit o’ supper
first, and that if he must be for shooting owls, he should begin by
shooting the one which was stealing all their young pigeons. Obedient as
usual, though querulous, Mr. Weekes presently took up his station in his
yard, watching the dovecote and the darkening sky; but luckily for the
pigeons, whom the owls were nightly protecting from their enemies the
rats, no owl made his appearance for a full half-hour after Mr. Weekes
had given them up in despair, and had carried off his gun to the wood in
hopes of better luck.
Meanwhile Mr. Pogson, after purchasing some dozen or so of fine porkers,
and a bottle of brandy to help him in the arduous task of getting them
home safely, began in the late afternoon to drive them down the long
high road towards the wood. The pigs were lively, and their owner began
to be a little unsteady on his legs--a sensation which he more than once
sought to correct by a draught of strong ale at a roadside
public-house. The remedy did not have the desired effect, and his
progress became slower and slower; but in spite of all obstacles, and by
dint of extreme severity and a lavish outlay of bad language, he
contrived to conduct himself and his charges across the bridge and the
meadows to the edge of the wood without serious mishap, arriving there
about the time at which Weekes was prowling in his yard after the barn
owl. The bottle of brandy was by this time more than half empty, and the
wood was as dark as pitch.
If Mr. Pogson had been in full possession of his wits he would hardly
have tried to force his way through the wood, and would have avoided the
bridle-path, and taken his pigs a couple of miles round by the road; but
he had gone like an unreasoning animal in the way he was accustomed to,
and now it was too late to turn back. He took another pull at the
bottle, switched the nearest pigs, and pulling himself for a moment
together, forced his drove into the narrow ride, trusting that they
would follow their noses and keep to the open path.
In the dense black darkness and stillness, a sleepy and a sickly
feeling came over Mr. Pogson’s usually hide-bound senses, from which he
was only for a moment awakened by a sudden movement of the pigs in front
of him. Whether it were a badger in the path, or a prowling fox that had
frightened them, certain it is that at this moment they all faced about,
and rushing with loud squeakings past the legs of their driver, vanished
in a general stampede away into the wood.
Mr. Pogson stood aghast, and leant against a tree-trunk for support. The
noise of the pigs died away, and he was alone--alone in blank darkness.
Even pigs are company, and now he would have given a good deal for the
companionship of a single one of his victims. There was a singing in his
ears, a cold sweat on his hard brow; he felt quite unable to go further;
his head swam.
Suddenly he heard a voice from overhead--a gentle voice, reproachful and
somewhat hollow and ghostly--
“Whoo? Tu-whoo?”
Mr. Pogson felt a creepy sensation, and would have cast himself to the
ground and hidden his face in the bluebells, but again the voice asked--
“Whoo? Whoo? Tu-whoo?”
“Pogson o’ Highfield,” cried the belated man in answer. But in still
more reproachful accents, the voice demanded for the third time--
“Whoo? Tu-whoo?”
“Pogson o’ Highfield, pig-dealer,” cried the wretched man in stuttering
accents; “a man as never did no harm to nothing in all his life!”
“Whoo? Whoo?” said the voice, seeming to retreat, and urged to follow it
by some mysterious influence, Mr. Pogson staggered forward a few paces.
But he had hardly left his tree for more than half a minute, when
something caught him on the shins and tripped him up; at the same moment
he received a violent blow on the head which, added to the effects of
the brandy, stretched him quite unconscious on the ground. There he lay
in the darkness, with the bottle slipping out of his pocket, while the
mysterious voice continued to question him in vain from the old oak-tree
overhead.
And now, but for the voice, all is silent again for a few minutes.
Stay, who is this coming down the “light,” betraying his presence by the
crackling of a dry twig beneath his boot? It is Mr. Weekes, bent on
further profitable destruction; who would not have ventured himself in
the wood after dark for fear of ghosts and other terrors, but is now
urged to unwonted courage by the hope of gain and by the companionship
of his old gun. He is making for the tree where he saw the owl at
sunset.
As he advanced deeper into the dead blackness of the wood, Mr. Weekes
began to feel a slight uneasiness, which was soon uncomfortably
increased by strange noises on his right-hand, as of weird creatures
making towards him through the underwood. But he was now close to his
tree, and he could hear the hooting of the owls that were to be his
prey. He was in the act of raising his gun, ready to fire when an owl
should cross the bit of sky-line open above him, when the noises
increased to his right, and with a terrific crackling and confusion an
army of terrible creatures burst out upon him into the ride. All his
courage fled. With a yell of fear he discharged his gun at the
advancing foes, and then throwing it at them as a last resource, took to
his heels and ran from them. But he had not run many yards when he
tripped first over a heavy body, and then over a tightened cord, and
losing at once his balance and his senses, Mr. Weekes swooned outright.
V.
“Did ye hear the gun then?” said the keeper to Oliver, as they met a few
minutes later at the entrance to the wood. “There’s mischief _here_,
forbye at the barber’s. Tak’ yon big stick, mon, and gang ye on wi’ the
lantern.”
They went softly down the ride together, neither speaking again.
Presently the keeper stumbled over some solid body lying in the grass,
and Oliver, applying the lantern to it, discovered the corpse of a pig.
The keeper whistled softly, and turned it over with his foot.
“Lawfu’ spoil,” he whispered, “lawfu’ spoil. Ye shall taste Pogson’s
bacon yet afore ye die, Oliver!”
Then they found the gun, which Mr. McNab, now in his element, seized as
further spoil, and gave to Oliver to carry instead of the big stick. And
now he turned aside for a few yards to see what other sport his bairn’s
tricks of that day might have brought him. Oliver followed close at his
heels with the lantern.
“Whoo! Tu-whoo!” said the owl overhead.
“Ay, ye may weel hoot at ’em,” said the keeper, as the lantern revealed
the prostrate forms of Mr. Pogson and Mr. Weekes; the latest arrival
lying across the other, and seeming to embrace him with one arm, while
the hand of the other was thrust into a tuft of faded primroses.
Oliver and McNab regarded this spectacle for a few moments in silence.
Then Oliver, catching sight of the bottle slipping from the pig-dealer’s
pocket, turned his wistful eyes on the Scotchman.
“Mr. McNab,” he said, “I’m an old man, and maybe as I won’t be
woodcutting here much longer; but don’t you--for my sake don’t you”
(here he shyly laid his wrinkled hand on the keeper’s arm), “let such
sodden brutes as these come along and take the lives of innocent
creatures--creatures as God above loves, and has made me for to love
too--and all for a few shillings, or maybe guineas, and to please the
ladies in Lunnon as don’t know what a wood be like, nor what creatures
lives their lives here. I’ve known this tree for more nor fifty year,
but the owls ha’ known it belike for five hundred; and now, afore I’m
dead, the warrant’s out agen them. The fine ladies wants their feathers,
but they don’t know what they’re doing--they don’t _think_ what they do,
Mr. McNab. ’Tis fashion, I take it, only fashion, and it’ll blow over in
a bit if you’ll but stop ’em now. I’m an old fool maybe, but God knows
I’ve none too many to care about, or for to care about me, but my old
woman, and beside her there’s none but these birds and beasts in the
wood. And the peace of it, and the quiet of the life in it! Don’t you
let it be rooted up, Mr. McNab, nor the wild beast of the field devour
it!”
The keeper slapped him on the back of his smockfrock, and then seized
him by the hand. “Oliver, my auld lad,” he said, “ye’ve just saved them
out o’ the hand of the Pheelistines! And ye shall never want for friends
to care for ye, be they owls or be they McNabs!”
* * * * *