Haviland's Chum Part 5

"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 swis.h.i.+ng, 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 const.i.tuted 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 c.o.c.k-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 c.o.c.ks 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. "'Trespa.s.sers 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 superst.i.tious 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 G.o.d, 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. Even Haviland's nerves were not entirely proof against the interruption, coming when it did. Something had happened to startle them both.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE GHOST.

The next moment Haviland burst into a fit of smothered laughter.

"It's only a hen pheasant, Cetchy," he whispered, "but she made such a row getting up right under our feet just as we were talking about the ghost. It quite gave me the jumps."

"She's got nest too," said the other, who had been peering into the undergrowth. "Look, nine, ten eggs! That's good?"

"Yes, but you can't take them. Never meddle with game eggs."

"How I make collection if I not take eggs?"