Part 23 (1/2)
”I'll tackle him for you if we meet him, never fear!” laughed Bevis.
”I'll tell him it isn't respectable to go about without a head, and he must put it on again at once! All the same, though” (more gravely), ”I think, if I were you, I wouldn't come down this lane in the dark all by yourselves.”
”We certainly shan't!”
”It's a good thing I didn't use the hatchet on poor Fan,” said Clive, forbearing to mention that he had been huddling in the hedge, much too paralysed to take such violent measures.
”Bless her! She's an angel dog--not a demon!” murmured Merle, fondling the silky ears that pressed close to her dress. ”But you gave your auntie rather a scare, darling! Another time you mustn't bounce upon her in the dark! You must be a good girlie, and remember!”
The adventurous trio were not at all sorry to be taken safely to their own gateway by Bevis, but all the same they felt a little disappointed that they had no real peep at phantom forms in the lane. The girls did not intend to tell their experience to William, but Clive let it out, so they had to give him the full account. He looked at them with awe-struck admiration.
”Suppose it had really been the ghost and it had got you!” he ventured.
William took the supernatural side of life seriously. It was no laughing matter to him. On the very next day he came to Merle with important news.
”There's something queer in the wood above the house. I was up there with Connie, and we both heard it!”
Of course Merle had to go and investigate. William escorted her at once to the spot. There was a large elm just at the edge of the wood, and certainly it was emitting very strange sounds. At intervals a curious clicking whirr came from among the branches. Mr. and Mrs. Treasure, who had also been informed of the mysterious noises, had hurried up from the farm with little Connie. They stood staring upwards in much perplexity.
”Could it be a bird?” suggested Merle.
”That's no bird! It's something beyond that!” said Mr. Treasure solemnly.
”Oh! Is it an omen? My mother's been ill the last fortnight!” exclaimed Mrs. Treasure in much distress.
”Maybe it's a warning of some kind or another!” opined the postman, who had been pa.s.sing and had joined the party.
Whatever might occasion the noises, they continued with great regularity.
The postman, continuing his round, spread news of the strange happening, and soon quite a number of people came into the wood to listen for themselves. No one was in the least able to account for the sounds, and the general opinion was that the tree was haunted. Superst.i.tion ran rife, and most of the neighbours considered it must be a portent. Poor Mrs.
Treasure began to be quite sure it had some intimate connection with her mother's illness. Several girls were weeping hysterically, and one of them asked if the end of the world was coming. Meantime, more and more people kept crowding into the wood, and the idea spread that some disaster was imminent.
”My John's out with the trawler!” wailed one woman. ”I wish I'd not let him go! As like as not he'll be wrecked!”
”You never know!” agreed a friend.
Old Grandfather Treasure, who had hobbled up from the stackyard, quoted texts from Scripture and began to improve the occasion. His daughter-in- law, with Connie clasped in her arms, sobbed convulsively.
Into the midst of all this excitement suddenly strode Bevis.
”I heard about it down on the quay,” he said. ”I came up at once. I'll soon show you what it is!”
He was buckling climbing-irons on to his legs while he spoke, and with the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which he brought down with him.
”It's nothing at all ghostly,” he explained. ”The fact is I'm fearfully keen on photographing birds, and I've just got a cinema camera. There's a sparrow-hawk's nest in the next tree, and I want to take pictures of it; only I knew the clicking of the cinema business would scare them away probably for hours, so I made a little mechanical contrivance that would go on clicking and let them get used to the noise, so that they'd take no notice when I really went to work. You can look at it if you want to.”
It was such a simple explanation that those among the neighbours who had most loudly expressed superst.i.tious fears looked rather foolish, and the crowd began to melt away.
”Why didn't you tell us about it, Bevis?” asked Merle in private.
”Well, Soeurette, the fact is the birds are so shy that the fewer people who go and watch them the better for the success of a photograph. I'm afraid this will have sent them off altogether. Annoying, isn't it? Can't be helped, though, now. It's a good dodge all the same, and I shall try it again in some other tree when I can find a nest I want to take. Better luck next time, I hope!”
CHAPTER XV
Leave-takings