Several times again before the winter the solitude of our coppice was invaded by the same party—the little stout man with the mutton-chop whiskers, his white-collared, pasty-faced son, and a tall keeper with a ginger beard. But after their first two visits none of the coppice people paid much attention to them beyond sitting tight in cover. The very pheasants—stupid fellows as they are—made jeering remarks about their inability to kill anything unless it happened to be fool enough to sit still to be fired at. What did cause much more serious alarm was the rumour of a new and most dangerous enemy. The news came to us through a strange squirrel whom Rusty and I met one cold bright morning rummaging among the deep beech-leaves for a breakfast of mast. The poor fellow had a nasty wound at the back of his neck, and looked thin and miserable. He was so nervous that when he heard us coming he bolted wildly up a tree. We called to him, and, looking rather ashamed of himself, he came back and met us. ‘What’s up?’ inquired I. ‘We’re not going to eat you. Come down and finish your breakfast.’ ‘Ugh! don’t talk of eating!’ he answered in trembling tones. ‘You wouldn’t if you’d been so nearly eaten as I was three days ago;’ and he showed us his wound. ‘Weasel?’ Rusty asked. ‘No—much worse.’ ‘What, not a fox?’ ‘I’m not quite fool enough to sit on the ground and let a fox catch me,’ retorted the stranger. ‘It was a wild-cat.’ ‘Wild-cat!’ exclaimed I. ‘Why, I’d no idea there were any left in these parts!’ ‘No more had I,’ put in Rusty. ‘Mother says that a very old squirrel once told her that his father had seen a wild-cat, but that’s ever so many years ago. There are none left now.’ ‘None left!’ returned the other angrily. ‘Very well; all I say is, wait. Your turn will come.’ He was clearing out in a huff when I stopped him. ‘Wait a minute. I want to hear all about it. Anyone can see you’ve been badly mauled. Come with us up into our beech-tree, and I’ll find you a better breakfast than this half-rotten stuff; then you can tell us all about it.’