Their Screeching Often Echoed Through The Open Casement Of The
Gunroom.
A faint mark on the sward trended towards this hollow; it was a
trail made by the squire, one of whose favourite strolls was in this
direction.
This summer morning, taking his gun, he followed the trail
once more.
The grass was longer and coarser under the shadow of the limes, and
upborne on the branches were numerous little sticks which had dropped
from the rookery above. Sometimes there was an overthrown nest like a
sack of twigs turned out on the turf, such as the hedgers rake together
after fagoting. Looking up into the trees on a summer's day not a bird
could be seen, till suddenly there was a quick 'jack-jack' above, as a
daw started from his hole or from where the great boughs joined the
trunk. The squire's path went down the hollow till it deepened into a
thinly wooded coomb, through which ran the streamlet coming from the
wheat-fields under the road. As the coomb opened, the squire went along a
hedge near but not quite to the top. Years ago the coomb had been
quarried for chalk, and the pits were only partly concealed by the
bushes: the yellow spikes of wild mignonette flourished on the very
hedge, and even half way down the precipices. From the ledge above, the
eye could see into these and into the recesses between the brushwood. The
squire's son, Mr. Martin, used to come here with his rook-rifle, for he
could always get a shot at a rabbit in the hollow.
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