sounds were cautious and listening for danger.
Again trip, trip, trip, plainly heard and coming nearer, and from
half-a-dozen quarters now the same tripping sounds, followed by pause
after pause, and then the continuation as if the animals were coming
from a distance to meet at some central spot.

_Rap_!

A quick, sharp blow of a foot on the ground, followed by a wild, tearing
rush of rabbits among the trees, off and away to their burrows, not one
stopping till its cotton-wool-like tail had followed its owner into some
sandy hole.

Another pause with the soft petillation of endless life amongst the dead
leaves, and then from outside the forest, down by the sphagnum margined
pools, where the cotton-rushes grew and the frogs led a cool, soft
splashing life, there came a deep-toned bellowing roar, rising and
falling with a curious ventriloquial effect as if some large animal had
lost its way, become bogged, and in its agony was calling upon its owner
for rescue.

No large quadruped, only a brown-ruffed, long necked, sharp-billed
bittern, the now rare marsh bird which used to haunt the watery
solitudes with the heron, but save here and there driven away by
drainage and the naturalist's gun.

And as Vane lay and listened, wondering whether the bird uttered its
strange, bellowing song from down by a pool, or as it sailed round and
round, and higher and higher, over the boggy mere, he recalled the
stories Chakes had told him of the days when "bootherboomps weer as
plentiful in the mash as wild ducks in winter." And then he tried to
fit the bird's weird bellowing roar with the local rustic name--"boomp
boomp--boother boomp!" but it turned out a failure, and he lay listening
to the bird's cry till it grew fainter and less hoarse. Then fainter
still, and at last all was silent, for Vane had sunk once more into a
half-insensible state, it could hardly be called sleep, from which he
was roused by the singing of birds and the dull, chattering wheezing
chorus kept up by a great flock of starlings, high up in the beech tops.

The feverish feeling which had kept him from being cold had now passed
off, and he lay there chilled to the bone, aching terribly and
half-puzzled at finding himself in so strange a place. But by degrees
he recalled everything, and feeling that unless he made some effort to
crawl out of the beech-wood he might lie there for many hours, perhaps
days, he tried to turn over so as to get upon his knees and