e windows of Barrow Hall.

But if the grass told no story it was otherwise with the wood, for
Geoffrey could hear the rabbits thumping in their burrows among the
roots of the thorn. Twice a cock-pheasant uttered a drowsy, raucous
crow, and there was a blundering of unseen feathery bodies among the
spruce, while, when this ceased, he heard a water-hen flutter with feet
splashing across a hidden pool. Then heavy stillness followed,
intensified by the clamor of a beck which came foaming down the side of
a fell until, clattering loudly, wood-pigeons, neither asleep nor
wholly awake, drove out against the sky, wheeled and fell clumsily into
the wood again. All this was a plain warning, and keeper Evans nodded
agreement when Captain Franklin said:

"There's somebody here, and, in order not to miss him, we'll divide our
forces once more. If you'll go in by the Hall footpath, Thurston, and
whistle on sight of anything suspicious, I'd be much obliged to you."

A few minutes later Thurston halted on the topmost step of the lofty
stile by which a footpath from the Hall entered the wood. Looking back
across misty grass land and swelling ridges of heather, he could see a
faint brightness behind the eastern rim of the moor; but, when he
stepped down, it was very dark among the serried tree-trunks. The
slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim
ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape
and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to
clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of
sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy
astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird
were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive
effort of summer, were sinking under solemn silence into her winter
sleep.

The watcher knew the wood was a large one and unlawful visitants might
well be hidden towards its farther end. He stood still at intervals,
concentrating all his powers to listen, but his ears told him nothing
until at last there was a rustle somewhere ahead. Puzzled by the
sound, which reminded him of something curiously out of place in the
lonely wood, he instantly sank down behind an ash tree.

The sound certainly was not made by withered bracken or bramble leaves,
and had nothing to do with the stealthy fall of a poacher's heavy boot.
It came again more clearly, and