the silence of the windy wood, for trees make a silence even in their noise of wind.
She saw a secret little clearing, and a secret little hut made of rustic poles. And she had never been here before! She realised it was the quiet place where the growing pheasants were reared; the keeper in his shirtsleeves was kneeling, hammering. The dog trotted forward with a short, sharp bark, and the keeper lifted his face suddenly and saw her. He had a startled look in his eyes.
He straightened himself and saluted, watching her in silence, as she came forward with weakening limbs. He resented the intrusion, he cherished his solitude as his only and last freedom in life.
"I wondered what the hammering was," she said, feeling weak and breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he looked so straight at her.
"Ah'm gettin' th' coops ready for th' young bods," he said, in broad vernacular.
She did not know what to say, and she felt weak.
"I should like to sit down a bit," she said.
"Come and sit 'ere i' th' 'ut," he said, going in front of her to the hut, pushing aside some timber and stuff, and drawing out a rustic chair, made of hazel sticks.
"Am Ah t' light yer a little fire?" he asked, with the curious naiveté of the dialect.
"Oh, don't bother," she replied.
But he looked at her hands: they were rather blue. So he quickly took some larch twigs to the little brick fireplace in the corner, and in a moment the yellow flame was running up the chimney. He made a place by the brick hearth.
"Sit 'ere then a bit, and warm yer," he said.
She obeyed him. He had that curious kind of protective authority she obeyed at once. So she sat and warmed her hands at the blaze, and dropped logs on the fire, whilst outside he was hammering again. She did not really want to sit, poked in a corner by the fire; she would rather have watched from the door, but she was being looked after, so she had to submit.
The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little rustic table and stool beside her chair, and a carpenter's bench, then a big box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe, hatchet, traps, things in sacks, his coat. It had
