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Updated: June 25, 2025
Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mind various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence of this astonishing young savage. Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry had been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably scarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off bodily from the hills.
It was the only remark he had made during the drive, but as Van Cheele had talked incessantly his companion's silence had not been noticeable. "A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. Nothing more formidable," said Van Cheele. The artist said nothing. "What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, when they were on the platform. "Nothing. My imagination.
"It was getting so late, I thought it wasn't safe to let it go back alone. What a lovely sunset, isn't it?" But Van Cheele, although not oblivious of the glow in the western sky, did not stay to discuss its beauties. At a speed for which he was scarcely geared he raced along the narrow lane that led to the home of the Toops.
At breakfast next morning Van Cheele was conscious that his feeling of uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not wholly disappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouring cathedral town, hunt up Cunningham, and learn from him what he had really seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in the woods.
"Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy. "Where do you live?" "Here, in these woods." "You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele. "They are very nice woods," said the boy, with a touch of patronage in his voice. "But where do you sleep at night?" "I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."
In an otter the movement would not have been remarkable; in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently startling. His foot slipped as he made an involuntarily backward movement, and he found himself almost prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank, with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. Almost instinctively he half raised his hand to his throat.
He was drier than when Van Cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration was noticeable in his toilet. "How dare you come here?" asked Van Cheele furiously. "You told me I was not to stay in the woods," said the boy calmly. "But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should see you!"
Here is the train," said Cunningham. That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent rambles through his woodland property. He had a stuffed bittern in his study, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his aunt had possibly some justification in describing him as a great naturalist. At any rate, he was a great walker.
"He seems to have lost most of that, too," said Van Cheele, making frantic little grabs at the Morning Post to keep it in its place. A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly as a stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done.
His misgivings were not diminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had bolted out of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and now obstinately remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of the orchard, while the canary, usually as vocally industrious as Van Cheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps.
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