"Well, sir, we must not make mischief; he was a young chap new at the business, a sort of grand-nevvy of mine by the wife's side. He'll do better next time, will young Dick Westlock. He was over-eager, that's all. And when you hear a cry in these woods, unless you are thoroughly accustomed to them, it may lead you a pretty dance: it takes a practised ear to tell rightly where it comes from." "You should know me better, Bradford," returned I, "than to suppose I would bring a lad to harm by mentioning such a matter; but I should like to ask him a question or two, if you will point him out." "There he is then, sir," answered Oliver, pointing to a good-looking, honest lad enough, but one who perhaps would scarcely have been considered sufficiently old for so trustworthy a part as sentinel of the home preserves, had he not been grand-nephew to the head keeper. "Why, Dick," said I, "your uncle telly me that you took an owl for a poacher last night, and followed his voice all over the Chase." "It wasn't no owl," sir, quoth Dick, stoutly; "it were the voice of a man, whosoever it was." "Don't thee be a fool," exclaimed his uncle, roughly. "I tell thee it was a bird, and called like this;" and the keeper gave a very excellent imitation of the cry of an owl. This was not greatly unlike the sound which had so recently affrighted my own ears; but then owls rarely cry in the daytime. "Dick," cried I, "never mind your uncle; listen to me. If you thought it was a human voice, what do you think it said?" "Well, I can't rightly say as it said anything; it seemed to me to be a sort of wobbling in the throat; and I thought it might be a sound among some poaching fellars, made with a bird-call, or the like of that." "Supposing it said any word at all, Dick, what word was it most like?" Mr. Richard Westlock looked as nonplused and embarrassed as though I had propounded to him some extremely complicated riddle. "Was it anything like 'Hel--p, hel--p?'" said I, imitating as well as I could those terrible tones. "Bless my body," quoth Mr. Richard, slapping his legs with his hands, in admiration of my sagacity, "if them ain't the very words as it _did_ say!" "What think you of that, Oliver Bradford?" inquired I, gravely. "As the bell tinks, so the fool thinks," responded the head keeper, sententiously. "If you had asked Dick whether the word wasn't 'Jerusalem,' he would have said, 'Ay, that was the very word.'" "Still," urged I, "since there may be something more than fancy in the thing, and the voice, if it was one, could not have come from under water, let the Park woods be thoroughly searched at once. There are men enough outside the gates to do that, without suspending the work that is going on here, and why should we lose time?"