David crept through the furze looking out for birds. He saw an old blackbird hopping about under the bushes, and he shot at it; but it flew away with a great deal of noise, as if laughing at David, who had to spend a long time getting back his arrow from among a lot of prickly brambles. There were numbers of yellow-hammers perching about on the furze bushes and crying out: _A very, very little bit of bread and no chee-e-e-ese_, and a pair of bold little stone-chats that kept flying round calling _a-tick, a-tick_, but David did not want to shoot at them. Then a family of green woodpeckers, father and mother and four young ones, came flying across from the woods; and David was so keen on watching them that he forgot he was a hunter; so when he got to the hut he was empty-handed. He was the first in, but after a while Joe came, and he also had got nothing. “I nearly shot a starling,” he said; “there was a flock of them running about on the grass, and I shot right into the middle of them. I wish I had got one, for it says in that book of mine that a starling is the best bird to get when you are learning to stuff, as it is easy to skin--I say, it would be fun to shoot a rabbit and skin it, and try to cure the skin!” Just then Dick came in. He had his pockets stuffed out, and the others wanted to know what he had got. He said they were to make a fire and then he would show them; so they went out and collected sticks and made a fire in the fireplace outside the hut. Then Dick brought out of his pocket six potatoes, and said that was all his game. “I never saw anything to shoot at,” he said, “but the men in a field over there are taking up potatoes and they gave me these for twopence, and would have let me have more if I could have stowed them away. I thought we could roast them in the ashes.” But Dick had something else to show. He had found some pieces of wool, torn off sheep’s fleeces, hanging to the thorn bushes on the heath, and had gathered them all up. “To-morrow I shall go and try to get some more,” he said, “and when I have got enough, I shall make a spindle, if I can find out exactly what it ought to be like, and see if I can spin some yarn: and if I can spin the yarn, I shall rig up a loom and have a try at weaving a piece of cloth. There isn’t much chance of being able to do it right, of course, but it is good fun trying.” _Chapter the Twenty-ninth_ _THE STORY OF TIG: How the Lake People brought Tidings of War_ ONE day when Tig was sitting at the door of his hut trimming sticks for arrows, he heard the dogs barking, so he went to the gate and looked out. He saw three men coming up the hill, and when they came nearer he saw that they were some of the Lake Village people, friends of his. He went out to meet them, and brought them into the village and took them to his father’s hut, because they said they had brought an important message.