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They waited in silence, but with beating hearts. A loud knock sounded suddenly on the door a dull, heavy blow, as if one had pounded it with a tree-stump. The dog burst into a panic of barking, flew to the door and sniffed at the threshold. He whined and scratched frantically with his forepaws.
He had a character for making shrewd, incisive remarks, and was called ironical, because he had a habit of dispersing flattering delusions and wilful pretences by bringing the dry light of truth to bear upon them a gratuitous disagreeableness which was perhaps the reason why he was now perched on a tree-stump alone, casting shy, bird-like glances hither and thither at two children quarrelling over a cracked tea-cup, at the rector halting about uncomfortably amongst the "secondary people," at his wife being instructed by Lady Latimer, at Lady Latimer herself, tired but loath to go, at Bessie Fairfax, full of spirit and forgetfulness, running at speed over the grass, a vociferous, noisy troop of children after her.
A few yards from the tree-stump lay a nest, hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. Above the rim showed a circle of hungry gaping beaks. The snake was crawling steadily toward the nest. It was almost there. The thrush became wild in fear for its young. Again and again its body flashed in silent deadly attack.
Here and there an old tree-stump projected out of the ground, while in other places the stumps had been removed without filling in the corresponding hole.
Meanwhile, the little fire Ted had lighted against a blackened tree-stump had grown into the sort of fiery furnace that was associated in my mind with certain passages in the Old Testament; and, suspended by a piece of fencing wire from a cross stake on two forked sticks, our billy was boiling vigorously. In all such bush-craft as this Ted was facile princeps, and he asked no better employment.
On summer evenings the grandmother always sat by the door on a tree-stump that was there, and often Stineli and Rico stood by her side while she told them stories. But when the prayer-bell sounded from the little church tower she always said, "Now say, 'Our Father; and be sure, children, that you never forget to say that prayer every evening; the prayer-bells ring to remind you of that."
Whenever they liked they could bring some of their young companions home from the School-house in the evening; and then the Bear-mother would seat herself on a tree-stump and play tunes for them to dance to for Fru Bjornson was highly educated, and had learnt the concertina in all its branches.
The officer laughed; but there was that in the boy's tone and manner that induced him to obey. Gadarn, the chief, was seated on a tree-stump inside of a booth of boughs, leaves, and birch-bark, that had been hastily constructed for his accommodation. He was a great, rugged, north-country man, of immense physical power as most chiefs were in those days.
Beyond the possibility of there being some reptile about that had crawled up from the river, hungry and supper-hunting, there had never seemed to be anything about home that was alarming, and night after night I had stolen out to listen to the forest sounds, and scent the cool, damp, perfumed air; but now there was a feeling of danger at hand, lurking perhaps so close that it would not have been safe to open the door; and as I watched beside Morgan from between the window-bars, we were constantly touching each other, and pointing to some tree-stump, tuft, or hillock, asking whether that was an Indian creeping cautiously toward the house.
At the signal his four assistants seized their prisoner, and, despite his terrible struggles, rapidly placed him, head downwards, with his back against the tree-stump, and his limbs extended as far as they would go round it, when the fetish-man proceeded with cruel deliberation to secure him in position by nailing him there, the spikes taken from the fetish-house being used for the purpose.
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