I could learn my Latin and mathicks half as fast. That isn't
anybody cutting wood; it's a squirrel."

"A squirrel?"

"Yes; there he goes. He's coming this way. You watch him. He's cross,
because he sees us. There, what did I say?"

I looked in the direction he pointed out, and saw the leaves moving.
Then there was a rustle, and the little brown and white animal leaped
from bough to bough, till I saw it plainly on a great grey and green
mossy bough of a beech tree, not thirty feet away, where it stood
twisting and jerking its beautiful feathery tail from side to side, and
then, as if scolding us, it began to make the sounds I had before
heard--_Chop, chop, chop, chop_, wonderfully like the blows of an axe
falling on wood.

"Wonder whether I could hit him," cried Mercer, picking up a stone.

"No, no, don't! I want to look at him."

"There's lots about here, and they get no end of the nuts in the autumn.
But come along."

We soon left the squirrel behind, and Mercer stopped again, in a shady
part of the lane.

"Hear that," he said, as a loud _chizz chizz chizz_ came from a dry
sandy spot, where the sun shone strongly.

"Yes, and I know what it is," I cried triumphantly. "That's a cricket
escaped from the kitchen fireplace."

Mercer laughed.

"It's a cricket," he said, "but it's a field one. You don't know what
that is, though," he continued, as a queer sound saluted my ears,--a
low, dull whirring, rising and falling, sometimes nearer, sometimes
distant, till it died right away.

"Now then, what is it?" he cried.

"Knife-grinder," I said; "you'll hear the blade screech on the stone
directly."

"Wrong. That's Dame Durden with her spinning-wheel."

"Ah, well, I knew it was a wheel sound. Is there a cottage in there?"

"No," he said, laughing again; "it's a bird."

"Nonsense!"

"It is. It is a night-jar. They make that noise in their throats, and
you can see them of a night, flying round and round the trees, like
great swallows, catching the moths."

I looked hard at him.

"I say!"

"Yes; what?"

"Don't you begin cramming me, because, if you do, I shall try a few
London tales on you."

Mercer laughed.

"There's an old unbeliever for you. I'm not joking you; I never do that
sort of thing. It is a bird really."

"Show it to me then."

"I can't. He's sitting somewhere on a big branch, long way up, and you
can't find them because they look so like the bark of the tree, and you
d