I won’t describe how we reached the Hall, except to say that, instead of working down the road-hedge to the left, as we had done on the previous occasion, we struck boldly out down the right-hand side to the large meadow. Rusty guided me round to the home farm-buildings, which lay some quarter of a mile to the right of the Hall. The farm and rick-yards were surrounded on two sides by a stone wall, outside which was a strip of laurel shrubbery. ‘Now, you wait here,’ said Rusty with a patronizing air which I could not help resenting. ‘I’m going over the wall for my breakfast. You needn’t watch if you don’t like.’ ‘Don’t be a fool, Rusty!’ exclaimed I angrily, for I thought it sheer bravado on his part. ‘There’s nothing to eat there, except the chicken grain you profess to despise.’ ‘Oh! isn’t there?’ jeered my brother; and before I could say another word he had leaped on to the wall, and with another bold spring was down in the yard. It was still very early, a bright cloudless August morning, and everything dripping with dew. The place appeared to be deserted, although from the kitchen chimney of the farm-house a slight blue smoke was rising. Climbing into the top of a laurel, I got a good view of the whole yard, and watched Rusty nimbly scuttle across towards the further buddings. Behind these he was lost to sight. Suddenly arose the wild cackling of a frightened hen, and next moment, to my utter horror, there came Rusty round the corner of a shed, head up, as bold as brass, with a young chicken swinging by the neck between his sharp teeth. At the same moment I saw—what he failed to notice—a man, who raised his head cautiously over the half-door of a cowshed on the far side of the yard, and the level rays of the rising sun glinting on the barrels of a gun. I gave one sharp bark of warning. Too late! A puff of smoke sprang from the muzzle, the heavy report sent the sparrows up in a chattering cloud, and of my brother no more remained than a little red rag of broken fur stretched on the cobbles which paved the yard. I suppose the man with the gun could not have heard my attempted warning. If he had, nothing could have saved me, for I was too horror-stricken for the moment to move at all. I sat like a stuffed squirrel and watched him walk across to where Rusty lay. ‘Well, I never would ha’ believed it!’ he said wonderingly, holding the small bunch of mangled fur out at arm’s length. ‘If one of them chicks has gone I’ve lost a dozen; and to think it was this here little red rascal!’ He turned and called loudly, ‘Jim, bring me a hammer and a nail.’ A tousle-headed boy came out of the back door of the farm-house with the required implements. The man took the hammer, and deliberately nailed the dead body of my brother against the tarred wooden wall of one of the barns. ‘You’ll do for a warning,’ he remarked grimly as he turned away. And, sick at heart, I dropped out of sight and made the best of my way back to the coppice.