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For a considerable time Sabocha pursued his atrocious trade unsuspected, and many an unfortunate traveller was murdered in the dead of night at the solitary inn by the wood-side, which he kept; indeed, a more fit situation for plunder and murder I never saw.
By the twenty-fifth of September, the Red Maples generally are beginning to be ripe. Some large ones have been conspicuously changing for a week, and some single trees are now very brilliant. I notice a small one, half a mile off across a meadow, against the green wood-side there, a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer, and more conspicuous.
Half an hour after, Mr Inglis and the boys were passing out of the gate, and they soon reached the spot where the lads entered the wood the day they were lost; but this time they kept along the fields by the side; and beautiful those fields looked, and beautiful, too, the wood-side.
It circulates about from wood-side to hill-side like a dog that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone. The rocks retain all night the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed. And so does the sand. If you dig a few inches into it you find a warm bed. You lie on your back on a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill at midnight, and speculate on the height of the starry canopy.
When it was fully morning he arose, and found that the men were not hastening their departure, but were resting by the wood-side and disporting them about the meadow; so he wandered about amongst the men-at-arms and serving-men, and came across Redhead and hailed him; and there was no man very nigh to them; so Redhead looked about him warily, and then spake swiftly and softly: "Fail not to-night! fail not!
Drive gently to the old barrack yonder under the west-end of that wood-side, unhitch the horses and tie them in the shade; you can give them a bite of meadow hay at the same time; and then get luncheon ready. We shall be with you by two o'clock at farthest." "Ay, ay, sur!"
"Yelp, yelp, yelp," howl the hounds; and in about a quarter of an hour Tom has not above four or five couple at his heels. This number being a trifle, Tom runs his prad at a gap in the fence by the wood-side; the old nag goes well at it, but stops short at the critical moment, and, instead of taking the ditch, bolts and wheels round.
They came in till they were within half a shot of our little wood, when we fired one musket without ball, and called to them in the Russian tongue, to know what they wanted, and bid them keep off; but, as if they knew nothing of what we said, they came on with a double fury directly to the wood-side, not imagining we were so barricaded, that they could not break in.
'A witch, according to my nurse's account, 'must be a haggard old woman, living in a little rotten cottage under a hill by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning by the door; she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, and must be herself of so dry a nature, that if you fling her into a river she will not sink: so hard then is her fate, that, if she is to undergo the trial, if she does not drown she must be burnt, as many have been within the memory of man.
"Now, I think it comes to my turn to choose, and I'll tell you what I think; and that is, as several of the specimens in the butterfly cabinet are getting destroyed by the mites, we might take the nets and boxes, and have a very pleasant ramble by the side of Beechy Wood, and down the meadows, and then, if we happened to get so far, we could call and thank Mrs Benson again; and coming back to a late tea, we should find plenty of moths along by the wood-side."
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