over, instead of playing cricket and horseshoe quoits with the rest, he went off into the woods. He could have told any bird how to make its nest, and in which tree. He could always draw an answer when he whistled their calls. To him the forest that crowned the hill and held its own for many miles to the south was like a well-thumbed book, which he had read and reread, until it and its ways were part of him, and he of it. At night he was up there with snares, noiseless as a ghost, wide-eyed as a cat.
This morning, carrying his cap gingerly, he made a short cut over hedge and ditch and fetched up in the lane by the Hawthorne cottage. Here he looked quickly up and down and then raised the latch of the gate, silent as a burglar. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. It was still too early, he knew, for the gentry. Yet he tiptoed along the flags almost furtively, glancing at the upstairs windows, which were open, with unconcealed anxiety.
The sun was already on the brass knocker. Curly winked back at it, and from his cap drew forth something protected by two large cabbage leaves, still wet with dew. He laid them down on the doorstep and in another moment was gone.
The only observers of this visitation were a family of swallows, the bottom of whose nest made it necessary to open or close the upstairs window with infinite care. parent birds were functioning swiftly in response to the noisily expressed desire of four juveniles who were scarcely. in training for the flight of many hundred miles south which they were so soon to take.
Their shrill twitterings at last drew a response from inside the room. There was a deep sigh, a stirring, a rustle of sheets, and a girl sat up in bed and looked at her wrist watch. For a moment she blinked, then, with a devastating yawn, gave a scramble and was up on her feet.
