intense; that solemn
hush seemed to pervade the forest which some poet has attributed to the
cessation of spiritual life, as though the haunters of the glade were
_waiting_ for the resumption of their occupations until the interloping
mortal should pass by. Nothing stirred, or, if so, it was motion without
sound, as when the full-feathered owl slid softly through the midnight
air above him. Not a dead leaf fell; and where the leaves had fallen
there they lay. How was it, then, that a twig broke? The deer were
couched; the pheasants sat at roost, their heads beneath that splendid
coverlet, their wing; and though there were creeping things which even
midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness, Yorke had imbibed
enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was
produced by none of these. A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing
through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different
fashion. Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the
crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then cautious
footsteps fell upon the frosty leaves, and, with a light leap on the
bank that fringed the copse, the poacher stood in the open.

That such he was, Yorke had no doubt whatever; the moonlight streamed
full upon him, and showed him to be none of the Crompton keepers,
unless, indeed, he was disguised. For an instant, it passed across his
mind that this might be Walter Grange himself--he was about the same
height and build--come to play a trick upon him to test his courage, for
the man's face was blackened like a burglar's; but this idea was
dismissed as soon as entertained. The keeper, he reflected, thought far
too seriously of the night's doings to make jest of them, and besides,
he could never have sprung upon the bank as yonder fellow did, his
limbs, though sturdy, being stiff with age and occasional rheumatism.
The intruder seemed quite alone, and it was probable, while his
confederates paid attention to the pheasants in the Home Park, that he
was bent upon making a private raid upon the sleeping water-fowl. He
had no gun, however, nor, as far as Yorke could make out, any other
weapon; and as soon as he had got near enough to the pond to admit of
it the watcher sprang out from beneath the shadow of the oak, and
placed himself between the stranger and the copse from which he
had emerged. Yorke was the taller by full six inches, and believing
himself to be more than