looking back from
the height of the stile; "there's a light gleaming out. Looks as though
he were lighting a lantern or signalling with it--"

"A lantern...." Ishmael scrambled up beside the other and his voice was
alert. "Then perhaps there is something in this idea of the Parson's. I
say, let's follow him. If he goes towards the wood it's fairly certain
he's up to something, if it's only wiring rabbits."

"Isn't it rather looking for trouble, old chap?" demurred Killigrew, who
did not know the name of fear for himself but was conscious of some
undefined dread that had stirred in him at the greeting of Archelaus.

"Better go back, perhaps," he added; "they'll be expecting us. What
d'you say?"

"That I'm going to follow Archelaus.... I'm about sick of him and his
underhand ways. You don't know how he's made me suffer in all sorts of
little things this past month. Talking to my own men at the inn and the
farms, laughing at me. Even John-Willy Jacka goes after him now, that
used to be a youngster with me.... You can go home if you like."

"Don't be a greater ass than you can help," advised Killigrew genially,
and the two set off together for the point where the light had just
flickered and gone out, as though the slide had been drawn over the
lantern, if lantern it were. On a dim stretch of road they made out a
form that bulked like that of Archelaus; it was joined by another and
then by two more, and all four set off towards the wood, Killigrew and
Ishmael behind them.

CHAPTER VI

THE BUSH-BEATING

In all the bleak country "the wood" represented mystery, glamour. It
made a dark wedge between two folds of moorland, its tree-tops level
with the piled boulders on the northern side, like a deeply green tarn
lapping the edge of some rocky shore. Oak, beech and ash, hawthorn,
sycamore and elder, went to make the solid bosses of verdure that filled
the valley, while at one end a grove of furs stood up blackly, winter
and summer. Giant laurels, twisted and writhing creations of a
nightmare, spread their snake-like branches beneath the rocky wall at
one side of the wood, and in spring they shook their pale, sickly
tassels in a gloom that was as green, as freckled with shallows of
light, as underseas. A stream gurgled through its depths, increasing the
illusion of a watery element. All over the sloping floor of the wood,
where the red leaves drifted high in due season, huge boulders were
piled, moss-grown, livi