He came near the nightingale’s young brood, safely reared. “Sweet kur-r-r!” The bird did not like it. These wild hops are a favourite cover with nightingales. A damp furrow or natural ditch, now dry, but evidently a watercourse in rain, seemed to have stopped the march of this creeping, twining plant, for over it he entered among hazel-bushes; and then seeing daylight, fancied he was close to the stockade; but to his surprise, stepped out into an open glade with a green knoll on one side. The knoll did not rise quite so high as the trees, and there was a quantity of fern about the lower part, then an open lawn of grass, a little meadow in the midst of the wood. He saw a white tail disappear among the fern--there were then rabbits here. “Bevis!” said Mark aloud. In his surprise he called to Bevis, as he would have done had Bevis been present. He ran to the knoll, and as he ran, more white tails--little ones--raced into the fern, where he saw burries and sand-heaps thrown out. On the top of the knoll there were numerous signs of rabbits--places worn bare, and “runs,” or footpaths, leading down across the grass. He looked round, but could see nothing but trees, which hid the New Sea and the cliff at home. Eager to tell Bevis of the discovery, and especially of the rabbits, which would furnish them with food, and were, above all, something fresh to shoot at, he ran down the hill so fast that he could not stop himself, though he saw something white in the grass. He returned, and found it was mushrooms, and he gathered between twenty and thirty in a few minutes--“buttons,” full grown mushrooms, and overgrown ketchup ones. How to carry them he did not know, having used his handkerchief already, and left his coat at home, till he thought of his waistcoat, and took it off and made a rough bundle of them in it. Then he heard Bevis’s whistle, the well-known notes they always used to call each other, and shouted in reply, but the shout did not penetrate so far as the shrill sound had done. The whistle came from a different direction to that in which he supposed the cave to be, for in winding in and out the brambles he had lost the true course and had forgotten to look at the sun. He found he could not go straight home, for the brambles were succeeded by blackthorn, through which nothing human can move, and hardly a spaniel, when thick as it was here. He had to go all round by the opposite shore of the island, the weed-grown side, and so to the fire under the teak-tree. “Where’s the gun?” said Bevis, coming to meet him. “I left it at home.” “No, you had it.” “I put it back as you were not coming.” “I never saw it.” “It’s in the hut.” “Didn’t you really take it?” “No--really. We’ll both go with the gun--” “So we will.” Bevis regretted now that he had made any difficulty. “No, it’s your turn; you shall have it.” “I shan’t,” said Mark. “Look here,”--showing the mushrooms--“splendid for supper, and I’ve found some rabbits!”