Part 22

“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.