The Tom Barber Trilogy_Volume I_Uncle Stephen, the Retreat, and Young Tom by Forrest Reid & Michael Matthew Kaylor

Author:Forrest Reid & Michael Matthew Kaylor [Reid, Forrest & Kaylor, Michael Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781934555866
Amazon: 193455586X
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2011-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TOM waited until Pascoe was out of sight before turning away. But he did not go back to the house, he followed the road for some fifty yards till he reached a five-barred gate. This he climbed, and was in the fields.

The cool breeze which had freshened the morning had now died down, and the hot sun brought out powerfully the heavy drowsy scents of whin and meadow-sweet. It was a lazy, sleepy afternoon, Tom thought. And in harmony with it, he himself felt agreeably lazy, as he loitered along the deeply-rutted cart-track skirting the outlying fields of Denny’s farm. These stretched away on his right, while on his left was a broad ditch with a high bank topped by a tangled hedge of hawthorn, honeysuckle, and briar, broken at intervals by trees—ash, willow, or oak—and by rough grey boulders stained with moss and lichen. The dogs plunged in and out of the ditch, which was at present dry, innumerable plants having drawn up its moisture—vetches, cow-parsley, ragged-robbin and foxgloves. The ferns and ivy, which would gradually darken as summer advanced, were still vividly green; and the leaves of the trees had a similar freshness—narrow oval willow leaves, serrated oak leaves, shining beech leaves, and cool delicate ash sprays. A cawing of rooks floated from the direction of the farm-house half a mile away.

The dogs were hunting, but in a desultory fashion, and they raised nothing. Suddenly Pincher disappeared down a cavernous rabbit-hole. Tom had known he would, for every time they passed that way the same thing happened. The hole had been abandoned long ago, and Pincher must have known this, but it possessed an irresistible fascination for him, and by frequent excavations he had so widened the entrance that now it would nearly have admitted Tom himself. The pertinacious Pincher had even managed to turn a corner, so that only his tail and frantically-working hind-legs were visible amid the showers of sand he scattered behind him. Tom, standing above the hole, could hear his forepaws scratching underground, and wondered how he prevented the sand from getting into his eyes. He must keep them shut, he supposed, for it never did; and then, through the noise Pincher was making, he heard very faint little squeals. Something alive was there—something much smaller than a rabbit—and he tied to get Pincher to come out.

But this was difficult, and before he had succeeded in gripping him, Pincher emerged backwards of his own accord, holding in his mouth a wretched little mouse, whom Tom hastened to rescue. He was too late; the mouse appeared to be dead; and yet Tom, examining the tiny body closely while he stroked it with one finger, could discover no wound. The mouse might not be dead, for he remembered once rescuing a young thrush from a cat, and the thrush had lain unconscious just like this, yet after a few minutes had suddenly recovered and flown away. Perhaps the mouse too would recover, though mice were much more easily killed than birds, and Pincher was rough and clumsy, not in the least like a cat.

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