CHAPTER VI

THE TERRIFYING LAW

ARAH JUNIPER'S sister Kate had married a

SAR

small farmer who lived a dozen miles from Caston, and every year Rudd and Sarah stayed there for a week or so when Mr. and Mrs. Sergison were away in Scotland or something was being done to the house.

Mr. Hoadley, the farmer, who had no children of his own, was fond of Rudd and took him on his daily rounds. Now and then they visited the neighbouring markets together, where Rudd participated in the sale or purchase of sheep and calves, and once they bought a horse which Rudd helped to lead home. Rudd had an ash stick with which to prod beasts as a test of their fatness. He learned to utter strange sounds of encouragement to a team.

In the evening Mr. Hoadley would join in a game of cards, the game being a geographical form of "Families." The fathers were the English counties, and the children consisted of four prominent towns in each, these towns being depicted very gaily on the cards.

"Perhaps," Mr. Hoadley would say when his turn came round, having in mind some previous inquiries on behalf of Warwickshire by his young friend; "Perhaps, Master Rudd, you will give me Leamington?"

"I'm sorry," said Rudd, "but I can't oblige. But I shall be glad if you will give me Warwick."

And Mr. Hoadley would disgorge Warwick with every appearance of discontent.

"And Rugby," Rudd would add, thus depriving Mr. Hoadley of his last Warwickshire possession.

On these visits Rudd was rapturously happy, for Nature was always his friend. Each morning he himself found the new-laid egg for his breakfast and with a sand-glass timed its boiling, which is a very exciting thing to do; and then came the round of inspection with Mr. Hoadley. The rest of the day was given to desultory play about the farm, helping to cut chaff or slice mangolds, nibbling oat cake (of which he grew rapturously fond), shovelling corn with a wooden spade, putting purple mottled beans into sacks, climbing the hay-stacks, or going with Sarah for flower-picking walks.

Sarah, being country-bred, knew many things. She knew that milk-wort is good for warts, that the heads of barley will run up your sleeve, that burrs will stick on clothes, that the mallow has a little cheese inside it and the periwinkle a little broom, and that nettles won't sting this month.

A mile away there was a deserted Elizabethan

house which at once repelled and fascinated Rudd. He would not have entered it alone for anything, and even with Sarah he was afraid; but with Sarah he could and would do it. It was overgrown with ivy, and bats and owls inhabited it; the diamond panes had gone from the windows; the doors were off their hinges; the garden was full of weeds head-high. Tightly holding Sarah's hand Rudd passed quiveringly from room to room, and when they came away he cast fearful looks back and accelerated her steps. Yet he always wanted to go there again. With Sarah he would do anything, for she had never betrayed him.

The kitchen where the happy, happy evenings were spent was a low Tudor room with a black ceiling and blacker beams, and a gun over the mantelpiece. It smelt all day of burning wood and all night of Mr. Hoadley's tobacco.

On one of Rudd's spring visits to the Hoadleys' there hung from a nail on a beam a string on which had been threaded a dozen or so of birds' eggs which Sarah and he had found. He was limited to one from each nest; but he was an active collector and quickly brought together a nice little assortment.

The eggs were blown through a hole at each end, and they made a pretty necklace with their gay and soft colourings: the tender pure azure of the hedge sparrow, the blood-spotted robin, the hieroglyphed chaffinch, and the bold black markings on the thrush's blue. They were Rudd's greatest treasure.

One evening when Sarah was out, just as cards were beginning, a stern knock was heard at the door and in strode the village policeman.

It was the first time that Rudd had ever been in the same room with a policeman, and he was properly nervous. Although belonging to a class into whose ranks the police seldom break, at any rate as terrifiers of the young, Rudd shared Small England's ordinary misgivings as to the men in blue. They were enemies, he knew, the police and boys, boys and the police, although he knew it only vaguely. The fact was remote, but it was a fact none the less.

"I suppose you've come about those birds' eggs," said Mr. Hoadley, with a broad wink to the constable, which Rudd did not see. Mr. Hoadley was the kind of humorist that requires a victim.

The policeman, following Mr. Hoadley's gaze, fixed his eyes on the string, and Rudd turned cold. He remembered indistinctly but terrifyingly something he had heard regarding the protection of wild birds. If only Sarah were in!

"Let's see, what's the punishment for taking eggs this year?" Mr. Hoadley went on, ruthlessly facetious.

Rudd quaked and shivered, not only with fear but with the sudden knowledge that one of his best friends could be treacherous.

The policeman, doing his best to be a jester too, affected to feel his pocket for documents or possibly even handcuffs; but Rudd could stand no more. He burst into tears and the joke was over.

It was explained away and the policeman developed all kinds of ingratiating human traits, but the shock had been too severe, and for a long time Rudd was inconsolable.

Mrs. Hoadley reproached her husband with severity. "It's always like that with Hoadley's jokes," she said. "He goes too far."

"Only a bit of fun, missus," said the crestfallen wag. "Here, Master Rudd, come and help me wind up my watch."

And Rudd warily approached him, with perplexity still on his face.

But it was not until the policeman went that he could breathe fairly naturally again.

Mr. Hoadley worked vigorously to undo his mischief, but he had no luck that night. In the morning, however, he found a squirrel's nest blown to the ground with four young squirrels dead in it, and his promise to have one of these stuffed for Rudd and set up realistically in its case by the village taxidermist, restored the boy's confidence. Together they descended the street to arrange for the work of art.

Thus was the memory of the evening made misty; but it was never effaced. Thereafter for ever a policeman was a menace too, and for a while the birds of that district retained their full clutches.