into the fields, when she heard a peculiar kind of low whistle. She took
no notice, thinking it was no concern of hers or her husband's, but as
they went on she heard it again, and then again, and it followed them
the whole walk, and it made her so uncomfortable, because she didn't
know where it was coming from or who was doing it, or why. Then, just as
they got out of the fields into the lane, uncle said he felt quite
faint, and he thought he would try a little brandy at the "Turpin's
Head," a small public-house there is there. And she looked at him and
saw his face was quite purple--more like apoplexy, as she says, than
fainting fits, which make people look a sort of greenish-white. But she
said nothing, and thought perhaps uncle had a peculiar way of fainting
of his own, as he always was a man to have his own way of doing
everything. So she just waited in the road, and he went ahead and
slipped into the public, and aunt says she thought she saw a little
figure rise out of the dusk and slip in after him, but she couldn't be
sure. And when uncle came out he looked red instead of purple, and said
he felt much better; and so they went home quietly together, and nothing
more was said. You see, uncle had said nothing about the whistling, and
aunt had been so frightened that she didn't dare speak, for fear they
might be both shot.

'She wasn't thinking anything more about it, when two Sundays afterwards
the very same thing happened just as it had before. This time aunt
plucked up a spirit, and asked uncle what it could be. And what do you
think he said? "Birds, my dear, birds." Of course aunt said to him that
no bird that ever flew with wings made a noise like that: sly, and low,
with pauses in between; and then he said that many rare sorts of birds
lived in North Middlesex and Hertfordshire. "Nonsense, Robert," said
aunt, "how can you talk so, considering it has followed us all the way,
for a mile or more?" And then uncle told her that some birds were so
attached to man that they would follow one about for miles sometimes; he
said he had just been reading about a bird like that in a book of
travels. And do you know that when they got home he actually showed her
a piece in the "Hertfordshire Naturalist" which they took in to oblige a
friend of theirs, all about rare birds found in the neighbourhood, all
the most outlandish names, aunt says, that she had never heard or
thought of, and uncle had the impudence to say that it m