There is a place on the moor¹ where the black water shines among the succulent moss², and the hairy sundew, eater of careless insects, spreads its red-stained hungry hands to the God who gives his creatures—one to feed another. On a ridge³ thereby⁴ grow birches with a silvery bark, and the soft green of the larch⁵ mingles⁶ with the dark green fir. Thither⁷ through the honey humming heather came the Vicar, in the heat of the day, carrying a gun under his arm, a gun loaded with swanshot for the Strange Bird. And over his disengaged hand he carried a pocket handkerchief wherewith, ever and again, he wiped his beady face.

 

He went by and on past the big pond and the pool full of brown leaves where the Sidder arises, and so by the road (which is at first sandy and then chalky) to the little gate that goes into the park. There are seven steps up[Pg 14] to the gate and on the further side six down again—lest the deer escape—so that when the Vicar stood in the gateway⁸ his head was ten feet or more above the ground. And looking where a tumult⁹ of bracken fronds¹⁰ filled the hollow between two groups of beech¹¹, his eye caught something parti-coloured that wavered and went. Suddenly his face gleamed and his muscles grew tense; he ducked his head, clutched his gun with both hands, and stood still. Then watching keenly, he came on down the steps into the park, and still holding his gun in both hands, crept rather than walked towards the jungle of bracken.

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