It seemed to Thorpe at that moment that he
had never wanted to sit down so much before in his life--and
he turned on his heel in the wet grass with a grunt of displeasure.
This mood vanished utterly a few moments later.
The remote sounds had begun to come to him, of boys
shouting and dogs barking, in the recesses of the strip
of woodland which the lane skirted, and at these he hastened
back to his post. It did not seem to him a good place,
and when he heard the reports of guns to right and left
of him, and nothing came his way, he liked it less
than ever; it had become a matter of offended pride
with him, however, to relieve the keeper of no atom
of the responsibility he had taken upon himself.
If Lord Plowden's guest had no sport, the blame for it
should rest upon Lord Plowden's over-arrogant keeper.
Then a noise of a different character assailed his ears,
punctuated as it were by distant boyish cries of "mark!"
These cries, and the buzzing sound as of clockwork gone
wrong which they accompanied and heralded, became all at
once a most urgent affair of his own. He strained his eyes
upon the horizon of the thicket--and, as if by instinct,
the gun sprang up to adjust its sight to this eager gaze,
and followed automatically the thundering course of the
big bird, and then, taking thought to itself, leaped ahead
of it and fired.
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