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It is late, and beyond your time for bed; quite mine, too. And so this young French Englishman whom you have sheltered is on his way with that fellow Wrigg to Loo Creek, where he is to join a lugger, and be set ashore at Cherbourg?" "Yes, father. But you will not send the soldiers in chase of him now?" "Not to-night, my boy," was the reply, "for I am too worn out and weary for anything but bed.
Nobody could see you even if he came by, and Bunny Wrigg is the only one likely to be about here. Clever as he is, I don't suppose he would spy you out. Why, I shouldn't have seen you if you hadn't started up as you did. That's right. I shan't be long."
"No," cried Waller, laughing, "I should just think not! Why, I should have done as Bunny Wrigg would scraped myself out a good hole in the side of one of the sandpits, half-filled it with dry bracken for my bed, made a corner for my fire somewhere outside, and then had a good go in at the rabbits and the fish; and there are plenty of pig-nuts and truffles, if you know how to hunt for them.
No!" he cried in an excited whisper, as he rested his hands on the window-sill. "Hist! It's Bunny Wrigg!" And then, clapping his hands to each side of his mouth, he softly imitated with wonderful accuracy the call of one of the woodland owls. "Hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi!" "Pee-week! Pee-week! Pee-week!" came from below them in the shrubbery a little to their left. "All right, Bunny," whispered Waller.
And he looked round as if to address the robin; but the bird had flitted away, and Bunny Wrigg gazed straight in the boy's eyes again. "Of course I could, lad, and where no soldiers could find him and even you couldn't. You let me have him, and he'll be all right." "Bunny, you are a good fellow!" cried Waller excitedly. "And you shall have the best waistcoat and boots that money can buy."
"It's that Bunny Wrigg, Master Waller, come begging, I suppose, because he knows master's out."
There, I'll bring you up books to read, to amuse you." "I can't read them. They wouldn't amuse me with my mind in this state." "Well; then, have a look at some of my things," cried Waller, pulling out the drawer of a big press. "These are all traps and springs with which I catch birds and animals in the forest. Bunny Wrigg taught me how to make them and how to use them. I wish you knew him.
"Wish I were as clever as Bunny Wrigg," he muttered. "He's just like a fox for hiding, throwing anyone off the scent. He'd have got here without anybody seeing him, while, for aught I know, I may have been watched all the time by soldiers, perhaps. That must have been some of them I heard shouting. Oh, it is so queer," he muttered passionately, as he hacked off the twigs of the stout sapling.
I have been out with Bunny Wrigg sometimes when he has been setting night-lines in the old hammer pond, and catching big eels, and sometimes wild ducks, and Pst! Someone coming!"
"Only this morning I was as happy as I could be, and now my head's all of a buzz with worry. Wish I'd gone and found Bunny Wrigg and told him all; he'd have helped me and enjoyed the job. I don't know, though. There's that hundred pounds reward. I am glad, after all, I didn't trust him. This is one of the things like father talked to me about where one has no business to trust anybody but oneself.
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