THE TREE OF JUSTICE
It was a warm, dark winter day with the Sou'- West wind singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months' job in the Rough at the back of Pound's Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf still clung to the beech-coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of Pound's Wood, and heard a horse's feet just as they came to the beech where Ridley the keeper hangs up the vermin. The poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches—some perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips.
'Three more owls,' said Dan, counting. 'Two stoats, four jays, and a kestrel. That's ten since last week. Ridley's a beast.'
'In my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.' Sir Richard Dalyngridge[1] reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind them. 'What play do you make?' he asked.
- ↑ This is the Norman Knight they met the year before in Puck of Pook's Hill. See 'Young Men at the Manor,' 'The Knights of the Joyous Venture,' and ' Old Men at Pevensey,' in that book.
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