Crown and Sceptre Part 20

"Foxes always have two holes," said Scarlett, dreamily.

"So do rabbits. Lots of holes sometimes. But we're not foxes, and we're not rabbits."

"No; but you'll be like a water-rat directly, if you sit on that moss.

It's as slippery as can be close to the edge. Come and get some nuts."

"Not ripe enough," said Fred, idly.

"Never mind; let's get some, whether or no."

"Where shall we go? We've got all there are about the edge of the lake."

"Let's go down there by the big oaks. There's a great clump of nuts just beyond, where we have not been yet."

"Oh yes, we have," said Fred, laughing; "leastwise, I have--one day when I came over and you weren't at home."

"That's always your way, Fred. I never come over to your place and take your things."

"Halloa!" laughed Fred, rising slowly from where he had lounged upon the mossy, b.u.t.tress-like roots. "Who came and helped himself to my gilliflower apples?"

Scarlett laughed. "Well, they looked so tempting, and we were to have picked them that day. Come along."

They went crushing and rustling through the woody wilderness for about a hundred yards from the side of the lake. It was a part sacred to the birds and rabbits, a dense dark thicket where oaks and beeches shut out the light of day, and for generations past the woodman's axe had never struck a blow. Here and there the forest monarchs had fallen from old age, and where they had left a vacancy hazel stubs flourished, springing up gaily, and revelling on the rotten wood and dead leaves which covered the ground, and among which grew patches of nuts and briar, with the dark dewberry and swarthy dwale.

Here, as they walked, the lads' feet crushed in the moss-covered, rotten wood, and at every step a faint damp odour of mould, mingled with the strong scent of crushed ferns and fungi, rose to their nostrils.

"Never mind the nuts," said Fred; "let's get out in the sunshine again.

Pst! there he goes."

He stopped short as he spoke, watching the scuttling away of a rabbit, whose white cottony tail was seen for a moment before it disappeared in a tunnel beneath a hazel clump.

"No; we'll have a few while we are here," said Scarlett, making a bound on to the trunk of a huge oak which had been blown down and lay horizontally; but while one portion of its roots stood up s.h.a.ggy and weird-looking, the rest remained in the ground, and supported the life of the old tree, which along its mighty bole was covered with st.u.r.dy young shoots for about thirty feet from the roots. There it forked into two branches, each of which was far bigger than the trunk of an ordinary tree; but while one was fairly green, the other was perfectly dead, and such verdure as it displayed was that of moss and abundant patches of polypody, which flourished upon the decaying wood.

Opposite the spot where Scarlett leaped upon the tree-trunk--that is to say, on the other side--the thicket was too dense to invite descent, and the lad began to walk along toward the fork, pressing the young branches aside as he went, followed by Fred, who had leapt up and joined him.

"Here, I'm getting so hot," cried the latter. "What's the good of slaving along here! Let's go back."

"I don't like going back in anything," replied Scarlett, as he walked on till he reached the fork, and continued his way along the living branch of the old tree, with Fred still following, till they stood in the midst of a maze of jagged and gnarled branches rising high above their heads, and shutting them in.

These dead boughs were from the fellow limb to that on which they stood, the two huge trunks being about six feet apart.

"There, now we must go back," said Fred.

"No. It looks more open there," cried Scarlett. "If we could jump on to the other trunk, we could go on beyond."

"Well, anybody could jump that," said Fred.

"Except Fred Forrester," replied Scarlett, mockingly.

"What! not jump that? I'll soon show you."

"No, no; you can't do it, Fred, and you may hurt yourself."

"Well, that will not hurt you. Here goes."

"Mind that branch there."

"Oh yes, I'll mind the branches; and you have to do it when I've done.

Way he!"

Fred stooped down, with his feet close together and his arms pressed to his sides, bent forward and jumped cleverly quite over the intervening s.p.a.ce, and came down upon the great dead moss-covered trunk.

There was a crash, and it seemed to Scarlett for the moment that his companion's heels had slipped, and that he had gone down on the other side among the bushy growth that sprung up; but a second glance showed him that the apparently solid trunk was merely a sh.e.l.l, through which Fred had pa.s.sed completely out of sight.

"Hoi! Fred! Hurt yourself!" cried Scarlett, laughing heartily.

There was no reply.

"Fred! Hoi! Where are you?"

Still no reply. And now, beginning to feel alarmed, Scarlett lowered himself down, and forced his way through the tangle of little shrubby boughs growing round him, to the dead trunk, and found himself within a breastwork of rotten bark as high as he could reach, and which crumbled away as he tried to get up, one great green mossy patch breaking down and covering him with damp, fungus-smelling touchwood.

"Fred! Where are you? Don't be stupid, and play with a fellow. Do you hear?"

Still there was no reply, and Scarlett gave an angry stamp on the soft ground.

"He's hiding away. I won't trouble about him," muttered the boy. Then aloud--"Very well, lad. I shan't come after you. I'm going back to the lake side."

Scarlett began to struggle back, making a great deal of rustling and crackling of dead wood; but he had not the slightest intention of leaving his companion behind, in case anything might have happened to him. So he clambered back through the brush of oak shoots on to the sound limb, and walked slowly back to the folk to try and walk along the dead portion of the tree; but before he had progressed six feet, he began to find that it was giving way, so he descended, and then slowly creeping in and out among the dead branches, sometimes crawling under and sometimes over, he began to make his way to the spot where Fred had disappeared.

It proved, however, a far more difficult task than he had imagined, for pieces of the jagged oak boughs caught in his jerkin; then he found that in stretching over one leg he had stepped into a perfect tangle of bramble, whose hooked thorns laid tight hold of his breeches, and scratched him outrageously as he tried to draw his limb back. Finding that to go forward was the easier, he pushed on, and took three more steps, vowing vengeance against his companion the while.

"It's horribly stupid of me," he muttered. "I don't see why I should take all this trouble to help a fellow who is only playing tricks, and will laugh when I find him. Oh, how sharp!"

Still there was the latent thought that Fred might have hurt himself, and Scarlett pressed on; but, all the same, seeing in imagination Fred's laughing face and mocking eyes. In fact, so sure, after all, did he feel that his companion was watching him from somewhere close by, that he kept thrusting the rough growth aside, and looking in all directions.

"I'll give him such a topper for this," he muttered; and then as he struggled on another foot, he suddenly stopped short, looked straight ahead, and exclaimed loudly, "There, I can see you. Don't be stupid, you old ostrich, hiding there. Now then, come out."

Scarlett's ruse was a failure. "He knows it isn't true," muttered the lad. "Serve me right for telling lies. It was only my fun, Fred," he cried hastily, to make honest confession of his fib. "But don't go on like that. Come out now, and let's get back. It makes me so hot."

He listened, and in the stillness of the wilderness he could have heard any one breathing, if he had been close at hand; but all was perfectly still, until, high up in a neighbouring tree, a greenfinch uttered its mournful little harsh note, which sounded like the utterance of the word _wheeze_.

"Surely he hasn't hurt himself," muttered Scarlett; and then aloud, as an uncomfortable sensation came over him--"Here, Fred! Fred! lad, where are you? Why don't you speak?"

"As if I don't know where he is," muttered Scarlett again, now growing thoroughly alarmed. "He must have slipped and hurt his back.--All right; I'm coming," he cried. "With you directly, as soon as I can get through this horrible tangle.--That's better. Now then, what's the matter? Fred, where are you? I say, do call out, or something. I don't like it. Fred, lad, are you hurt?"

And all this time he was forcing his way onward, the brambles tearing and the old oak wood crackling. The greenfinch uttered its mournful _wheeze_ once more, and fled in alarm as Scarlett broke down a good-sized branch which barred his way, the rotten dry wood snapping with a sharp report; and then, panting and hot after his heavy labour to get through so short a s.p.a.ce, he forced himself to the place where Fred had landed, and, to his utter astonishment, found that on his side the whole of the trunk was gone, merely leaving the sh.e.l.l-like portion which had impeded him before, while below the crumbled tree-trunk was a great gap.