He was going through the beech woods now at a “sweep’s trot” to keep himself warm. He had an old stake plucked from a fence in his hand, and as he ran he would every now and then twirl the stake round his head and give a “whoop” that sent the startled birds fluttering through the branches and the rabbits scuttling through the withered fern. He was not going through the thick of the wood, but down a broad drive that was the shortest cut to the village; and he did not twirl the stake round his head and whoop for the fun of the thing, but to keep up his courage. For the drive was just the place where the “carriage” was always met. Patsy’s uncle had seen the “carriage,” or said he had. So had a lot of other people. It was a hearse with plumes, driven by a man without a head, and it was supposed to haunt the grounds of Glen Druid Park, sometimes even in daylight. The horrible thing about it was that when the man without the head saw you, he made straight for you; and, if he overtook you, down he would get and bundle you into the vehicle and drive off, and then you were done for. The snow on the drive, like the snow on the grass of the park, showed all sorts of little footprints. Tracks of hares and rabbits and the trail of a stoat, Patsy knew and could distinguish them all. Though he could neither read or write, he knew the habits and names of all the wild animals and birds that were to be seen in the woods and ways around; he knew all the tales about the fairies that lived under the ferns in the glens, and the cluricaunes that cobbled the fairies’ boots. He had never seen a cluricaune or a fairy, but he believed in them, notwithstanding the fact that he had a very sharp and practical mind where the ordinary business of life was concerned. Suddenly Patsy came to a stand close to the trunk of a great beech tree. He had caught a glimpse of something in the wood on the right-hand side of the drive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV CON COGAN It looked like a heap of old clothes at first sight, then he made it out to be the figure of a man on his knees engaged in taking a rabbit from a snare. He was a forlorn-looking man in tatters, and with long hair that hung over his shoulders, and, bent down there amidst the withered ferns, and under the shadow of the tree branches, he looked not unlike a gnome or the ghost of a robber; but he did not frighten the boy, who recognised the figure at once as that of his uncle, Con Cogan.