Page:Under the greenwood tree (1872 Volume 2).pdf/124

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
112
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

into my shirt and wouldn't be quiet no-how.'

Dick followed him to the door.

'I've come to speak a word to you,' he repeated, looking out at the pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley. 'You may perhaps guess what it is about.'

The keeper lowered his hands into the extreme depths of his pockets, twirled his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked perpendicularly downward as if his glance. were a plumb-line, then scrupulously horizontal, gradually collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they were all in the neighbourhood of his eyes.

'Maybe I don't know,' he replied.

Dick said nothing; and the stillness was disturbed only by some small bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining copse, whose cry passed into the silence without mingling with it.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.