With a blow of his open hand
the keeper knocked the weasel yards away; then, in his rage and fear,
with whitened face, he wished instead he had beaten the creature down
upon the earth, for the weasel, despite the grinding of his broken rib,
began to crawl off, and he could not reach him.

He looked round for a stick or stone, there was none; he put his hand in
his pocket, but his knife had slipped out when he fell from the tree. He
passed his hands over his waistcoat seeking for something, felt his
watch--a heavy silver one--and in his fury snatched it from the swivel,
and hurled it at the weasel. The watch thrown with such force missed the
weasel, struck the sward, and bounded up against the oak: the glass
shivered and flew sparkling a second in the sunshine; the watch glanced
aside, and dropped in the grass. When he looked again the weasel had
gone. It was an hour before the keeper recovered himself--the shuddering
terror with which he woke up haunted him in the broad daylight.

An intolerable thirst now tormented him, but the furrow was dry. In the
morning, he remembered it had contained a little water from the rain,
which during the day had sunk into the earth. He picked a bennet from
the grass and bit it, but it was sapless, dried by the summer heat. He
looked for a leaf of sorrel, but there was none. The slow hours wore on;
the sun sank below the wood, and the long shadows stretched out.
By-and-by the grass became cooler to the touch; dew was forming upon it.
Overhead the rooks streamed homewards to their roosting trees. They
cawed incessantly as they flew; they were talking about Kapchack and
Choo Hoo, but he did not understand them.

The shadows reached across the glade, and yonder the rabbits appeared
again from among the bushes where their burrows were. He began now to
seriously think that he should have to pass the night there. His ankle
was swollen, and the pain almost beyond endurance. The slightest attempt
at motion caused intense agony. His one hope now was that the same
slouching labourer who had passed in the morning would go back that way
at night; but as the shadows deepened that hope departed, and he doubted
too whether any one could see him through the underwood in the dark. The
slouching labourer purposely avoided that route home. He did not want to
see anything, if anything there was.

He went round by the high road, and having had his supper, and given his
wife a clout in the head, he saunter