ed down to the alehouse. After he
had taken three quarts of beer, he mentioned the curious incident of the
white handkerchief in the woods to his mates, who congratulated him on
his sense in refraining from going near it, as most likely it was one of
that keeper's tricks, just to get somebody into the wood. More talk, and
more beer. By-and-by the keeper's wife began to feel alarmed. She had
already found the dead dog in the kennel; but that did not surprise her
in the least, knowing her husband's temper, and that if a dog disobeyed
it was not at all unusual for a cartridge to go whistling after him.

But when the evening came, and the darkness fell; when she had gone down
to the alehouse, braving his wrath, and found that he was not there,
the woman began to get hysterical. The lad who acted as assistant had
gone home, so she went out into the nearest stubble herself, thinking
that her husband must have finished his round before lunch, and was
somewhere in the newly-reaped fields. But after walking about the
rustling stubble till she was weary, she came back to the alehouse, and
begged the men to tell her if they had seen anything of him. Then they
told her about the white handkerchief which the slouching poacher had
seen in the wood that morning. She turned on him like a tiger, and
fiercely upbraided him; then rushed from the house. The sloucher took up
his quart, and said that he saw "no call" to hurry.

But some of the men went after the wife. The keeper was found, and
brought home on a cart, but not before he had seen the owl go by, and
the dark speck of the bat passing to and fro overhead.

All that day Bevis did not go to the copse, being much upset with the
cheat the weasel had played him, and also because they said the grass
and the hedges would be so wet after the storm. Nor did anything take
place in the copse, for King Kapchack moped in his fortress, the
orchard, the whole day long, so greatly was he depressed by the
widespread treason of which the owl had informed him.

Choo Hoo, thinking that the treaty was concluded, relaxed the strictness
of discipline, and permitted his army to spread abroad from the camp and
forage for themselves. He expected the return of the ambassador with
further communications, and ordered search to be made for every dainty
for his entertainment; while the thrush, for whom this care was taken,
had not only ceased to exist, but it would have been impossible to
collect his feather