The very same morning, after the rain had ceased, the keeper who looked after the great woods at the other end of the Long Pond set out with his gun and his dogs to walk round the preserves.  Now the dogs he took with him were the very best dogs he had, for that night a young gentleman, who had just succeeded to the estate, was coming down from London, and on the following morning would be sure to go out shooting.  This young gentleman had unexpectedly come into the property through the death of the owner, who was shot in his bedroom by a burglar.  The robber had once been his groom, and the squirrel told Bevis how it all happened through a flint falling out of the hole in the bottom of the waggon which belonged to the old farmer in whose orchard Kapchack had his palace.

The heir had been kept at a distance during the old gentleman’s lifetime, for the old gentleman always meant to marry and have a son, but did not do so, and also always meant to make a will and leave the best part of his estate to somebody else, but he did not do so, and as the old toad in the rhubarb patch told Bevis afterwards when he heard the story, if you are only going to do a thing, it would be no use if you lived a thousand years, it would always be just the same.  So the young fellow, who had been poor all his life, when he thus suddenly jumped into such a property, was not a little elated, and wrote to the keeper that he should come down and have some shooting.

The keeper was rather alarmed at this, for the former owner was not a sporting man, and did not look strictly after such things, so that the game had been neglected and had got scarce; and what was worse, the dogs were out of training.  He therefore got up early that morning, intending to go his rounds quickly, and then take the dogs out into the stubble, and try and thrash them into some use.  Presently, as he walked along, he came to the glade in the woods, and saw the dead hawk hanging from the trap up in the old oak-tree.  Pleased to find that his trap, so cunningly placed, had not been prepared in vain, he went up to the oak, leaned his gun against the trunk, ordered the dogs to lie down (which they did with some reluctance), and then climbed up into the tree to re-set the gin.

He took the hawk from the trap (his feathers were all draggled and wet from the rain), and threw the dead bird down; and, whether it was that the act of throwing it caused an extra strain upon the bough, or whether the storm had cracked it in the night, or whether it had rotted away more than appeared on the surface, or whether it was all of these things together, certain it is the bough broke, and down came the keeper thud on the sward.  The bough fell down with him, and as it fell it struck the gun, and the gun exploded, and although the dogs scampered aside when they heard the crack, they did not scamper so quick but one of them was shot dead, and the other two were mortally wounded.

For a while the keeper lay there stunned, with the wet grass against his face.  But by-and-by, coming to himself, he sat up with difficulty, and called for assistance, for he could not move, having sprained one ankle, and broken the small bone of the other leg.  There he sat and shouted, but no one came for some time, till presently a slouching labourer (it was the very same who put up the wire by the copse in which the hare was caught) chanced to pass by outside the wood.  The keeper saw him, but hoarse with shouting, and feeling faint too (for a sprained ankle is extremely painful), he could not make him hear.  But he bethought him of his gun, and dragging it to him, hastily put in a cartridge and fired.

The report drew the labourer’s attention, and peering into the wood, he saw some one on the ground waving a white handkerchief.  After looking a long time, he made up his mind to go and see what it was; but then he recollected that if he put his foot inside the wood he should be trespassing, and as he had got a wire in his pocket that would be a serious matter.  So he altered his mind, and went on.

Very likely the keeper was angry, but there was no one to hear what he said except the dead hawk.  He would have fired off fifty cartridges if he had had them, but as he did not like a weight to carry he had only two or three, and these did not attract attention.  As for the labourer, about midday, when he sat down to lunch in the cart-house at the farm where he worked with the other men, he did just mention that he thought he had seen something white waving in the wood, and they said it was odd, but very likely nothing to speak of.

One of the wounded dogs ran home, bleeding all the way, and there crept into his kennel and died; the other could not get so far, but dropped in a hedge.  The keeper’s wife wondered why he did not come home to dinner, but supposed, with a sigh, that he had looked in at an alehouse, and went on with her work.

The keeper shouted again when his throat got less hoarse, but all the answer he obtained was the echo from the wood.  He tried to crawl, but the pain was so exquisite he got but a very little way, and there he had to lie.  The sun rose higher and shone out as the clouds rolled away, and the rain-drops on the grass glistened bright till presently they dried up.

With the gleaming of the sun there was motion in the woods:  blackbirds came forth and crossed the glades; thrushes flew past; a jay fluttered round the tops of the firs; after a while a pheasant came along the verge of the underwood, now stepping out into the grass, and now back again into the bushes.  There was a pleasant cawing of rooks, and several small parties of wood-pigeons (doubtless from Choo Hoo’s camp) went over.  Two or three rabbits hopped out and fed; humble-bees went buzzing by; a green woodpecker flashed across the glade and disappeared among the trees as if an arrow had been shot into the woods.

The slow hours went on, and as the sun grew hotter the keeper, unable to move, began to suffer from the fierceness of the rays, for anything still finds out the heat more than that which is in movement.  First he lifted his hat from time to time above his head, but it was not much relief, as the wind had fallen.  Next he tried placing his handkerchief inside his hat.  At last he took off his coat, stuck the barrels of his gun into the ground (soft from the rain), and hung the coat upon it.  This gave him a little shadow.  The dead oak-tree having no leaves cast but a narrow shade, and that fell on the opposite side to where he was.

In the afternoon, when the heat was very great and all the other birds appeared to have gone, a crow came (one of Kauc’s retainers) and perched low down on an ash-tree not more than fifty yards away.  Perhaps it was the dead dog; perhaps it was the knowledge that the man was helpless, that brought him.  There he perched, and the keeper reviled him, wishing that he had but saved one of his cartridges, and forgetting that even then the barrels of his gun were too full of earth.  After a while the crow flew idly across to the other side of the glade, and went out of sight; but it was only for a short time, and presently he came back again.  This the crow did several times, always returning to the ash.

The keeper ran over in his mind the people who would probably miss him, and cause a search to be made.  First there was his wife; but once, when he had been a long time from home, and she in a great alarm had sought for him, she found him drunk at the alehouse, and he beat her for her trouble.  It was not likely that she would come.  The lad who acted as his assistant (he had but one, for, as previously stated, the former owner did not shoot) was not likely to look for him either, for not long since, bringing a message to his superior, he discovered him selling some game, and was knocked down for his pains.  As for his companions at the alehouse, they would be all out in the fields, and would not assemble till night:  several of them he knew were poachers, and though glad enough to share his beer would not have looked towards him if in distress.

The slow hours wore on, and the sun declining a little, the shadow of the dead oak moved round, and together with his coat sheltered him fairly well.  Weary with the unwonted labour of thinking, the tension of his mind began to yield, and by-and-by he dropped asleep, lying at full length upon his back.  The crow returned once more to the ash, and looked at the sleeping man and the dead dog, cleaned his beak against the bough, and uttered a low croak.  Once he flew a little way out towards them, but there was the gun:  it was true he knew very well there was no powder (for, in the first place, he could not smell any, and, secondly, if there had been any he knew he should have had the shot singing about his ears long before this; you see, he could put two and two together), still there was the gun.  The dog does not like the corner where the walking-stick stands.  The crow did not like the gun, though it was stuck in the ground:  he went back to the ash, cleaned his bill, and waited.

Something came stealthily through the grass, now stopping, now advancing with a creeping, evil motion.  It was the weasel.  When he stole away from the wood-pile, after escaping from the trap, he made up the field towards the copse, but upon reflection he determined to abandon his lair in the hollow elm, for he had so abused Bevis’s good-nature that he doubted whether Bevis might not attack him even there despite the squirrel.  He did not know exactly where to go, knowing that every creature was in secret his enemy, and in his wounded state, unable to move quickly or properly defend himself, he dreaded to trust himself near them.  After a while he remembered the old dead oak, which was also hollow within, and which was so far from the copse it was not probable Bevis would find it.

Thither he bent his painful steps, for his broken rib hurt him very much, and after many pauses to rest, presently, in the afternoon, he came near.  Lifting his head above the grass he saw the dead dog, and the sleeping keeper; he watched them a long time, and seeing that neither of them moved he advanced closer.  As he approached he saw the dead hawk, and recognised one of Ki Ki’s retainers; then coming to the dog, the blood from the shot wounds excited his terrible thirst.  But it had ceased to flow; he sniffed at it and then went towards the man.

The crow, envious, but afraid to join the venture, watched him from the ash.  Every few inches the weasel stayed, lifted his head; looked, and listened.  Then he advanced again, paused, and again approached.  In five minutes he had reached the keeper’s feet; two minutes more and he was by his waist.  He listened again; he sniffed, he knew it was dangerous, but he could not check the resistless prompting of his appetite.

He crept up on the keeper’s chest; the crow fidgeted on the ash.  He crept up to the necktie; the crow came down on a lower bough.  He moved yet another inch to the collar; the crow flew out ten yards and settled on the ground.  The collar was stiff, and partly covered that part of the neck which fascinated the weasel’s gaze.  He put his foot softly on the collar; the crow hopped thrice towards them.  He brought up his other foot, he sniffed — the breath came warm from the man’s half-open lips — he adventured the risk, and placed his paw on the keeper’s neck.

Instantly — as if he had received an electric shock — the keeper started to his knees, shuddering; the weasel dropped from his neck upon the ground, the crow hastened back to the ash.  With a blow of his open hand the keeper knocked the weasel yards away; then, in his rage and fear, with whitened face, he wished instead he had beaten the creature down upon the earth, for the weasel, despite the grinding of his broken rib, began to crawl off, and he could not reach him.

He looked round for a stick or stone, there was none; he put his hand in his pocket, but his knife had slipped out when he fell from the tree.  He passed his hands over his waistcoat seeking for something, felt his watch — a heavy silver one — and in his fury snatched it from the swivel, and hurled it at the weasel.  The watch thrown with such force missed the weasel, struck the sward, and bounded up against the oak:  the glass shivered and flew sparkling a second in the sunshine; the watch glanced aside, and dropped in the grass.  When he looked again the weasel had gone.  It was an hour before the keeper recovered himself — the shuddering terror with which he woke up haunted him in the broad daylight.

An intolerable thirst now tormented him, but the furrow was dry.  In the morning, he remembered it had contained a little water from the rain, which during the day had sunk into the earth.  He picked a bennet from the grass and bit it, but it was sapless, dried by the summer heat.  He looked for a leaf of sorrel, but there was none.  The slow hours wore on; the sun sank below the wood, and the long shadows stretched out.  By-and-by the grass became cooler to the touch; dew was forming upon it.  Overhead the rooks streamed homewards to their roosting trees.  They cawed incessantly as they flew; they were talking about Kapchack and Choo Hoo, but he did not understand them.

The shadows reached across the glade, and yonder the rabbits appeared again from among the bushes where their burrows were.  He began now to seriously think that he should have to pass the night there.  His ankle was swollen, and the pain almost beyond endurance.  The slightest attempt at motion caused intense agony.  His one hope now was that the same slouching labourer who had passed in the morning would go back that way at night; but as the shadows deepened that hope departed, and he doubted too whether any one could see him through the underwood in the dark.  The slouching labourer purposely avoided that route home.  He did not want to see anything, if anything there was.

He went round by the high road, and having had his supper, and given his wife a clout in the head, he sauntered down to the alehouse.  After he had taken three quarts of beer, he mentioned the curious incident of the white handkerchief in the woods to his mates, who congratulated him on his sense in refraining from going near it, as most likely it was one of that keeper’s tricks, just to get somebody into the wood.  More talk, and more beer.  By-and-by the keeper’s wife began to feel alarmed.  She had already found the dead dog in the kennel; but that did not surprise her in the least, knowing her husband’s temper, and that if a dog disobeyed it was not at all unusual for a cartridge to go whistling after him.

But when the evening came, and the darkness fell; when she had gone down to the alehouse, braving his wrath, and found that he was not there, the woman began to get hysterical.  The lad who acted as assistant had gone home, so she went out into the nearest stubble herself, thinking that her husband must have finished his round before lunch, and was somewhere in the newly-reaped fields.  But after walking about the rustling stubble till she was weary, she came back to the alehouse, and begged the men to tell her if they had seen anything of him.  Then they told her about the white handkerchief which the slouching poacher had seen in the wood that morning.  She turned on him like a tiger, and fiercely upbraided him; then rushed from the house.  The sloucher took up his quart, and said that he saw “no call” to hurry.

But some of the men went after the wife.  The keeper was found, and brought home on a cart, but not before he had seen the owl go by, and the dark speck of the bat passing to and fro overhead.

All that day Bevis did not go to the copse, being much upset with the cheat the weasel had played him, and also because they said the grass and the hedges would be so wet after the storm.  Nor did anything take place in the copse, for King Kapchack moped in his fortress, the orchard, the whole day long, so greatly was he depressed by the widespread treason of which the owl had informed him.

Choo Hoo, thinking that the treaty was concluded, relaxed the strictness of discipline, and permitted his army to spread abroad from the camp and forage for themselves.  He expected the return of the ambassador with further communications, and ordered search to be made for every dainty for his entertainment; while the thrush, for whom this care was taken, had not only ceased to exist, but it would have been impossible to collect his feathers, blown away to every quarter.

The vast horde of barbarians were the more pleased with the liberty accorded to them, because they had spent so ill a night while the gale raged through their camp.  So soon as the sun began to gleam through the retreating clouds, they went forth in small parties, many of which the keeper saw go over him while lying helpless by the dead oak-tree.

King Kapchack, after the owl had informed him of the bewildering maze of treason with which he was surrounded, moped, as has been said before, upon his perch.  In the morning, wet and draggled from the storm, his feathers out of place, and without the spirit to arrange them, he seemed to have grown twenty years older in one night, so pitiable did he appear.  Nor did the glowing sun, which filled all other hearts with joy, reach his gloomy soul.  He saw no resource; no enterprise suggested itself to him; all was dark at noonday.

An ominous accident which had befallen the aged apple-tree in which his palace stood contributed to this depression of mind.  The gale had cracked a very large bough, which, having shown signs of weakness, had for many years been supported by a prop carefully put up by the farmer.  But whether the prop in course of time had decayed at the line where the air and earth exercise their corroding influence upon wood; or whether the bough had stiffened with age, and could not swing easily to the wind; or whether, as seems most likely, the event occurred at that juncture in order to indicate the course of fate, it is certain that the huge bough was torn partly away from the trunk, leaving a gaping cavity.

Kapchack viewed the injury to the tree, which had so long sustained his family and fortune, with the utmost concern; it seemed an omen of approaching destruction so plain and unmistakable that he could not look at it; he turned his mournful gaze in the opposite direction.  The day passed slowly, as slowly as it did to the keeper lying beneath the oak, and the king, though he would have resented intrusion with the sharpest language, noticed with an increasing sense of wrong that the court was deserted, and with one exception none called to pay their respects.

The exception was Eric, the favourite missel-thrush, who alone of all the birds was allowed to frequent the same orchard.  The missel-thrush, loyal to the last, came, but seeing Kapchack’s condition, did not endeavour to enter into conversation.  As for the rest, they did not venture from fear of the king’s violent temper, and because their unquiet consciences made them suspect that this unusual depression was caused by the discovery of their treachery.  They remained away from dread of his anger.  Kapchack, on the other hand, put their absence down to the mean and contemptible desire to avoid a falling house.  He observed that even the little Te-te, the tomtit, and chief of the secret police, who invariably came twice or thrice a day with an account of some gossip he had overheard, did not arrive.  How low he must have fallen, since the common informers disdained to associate with him!

Towards the evening he sent for his son, Prince Tchack-tchack, with the intention of abdicating in his favour, but what were his feelings when the messenger returned without him!  Tchack-tchack refused to come.  He, too, had turned away.  Thus, deserted by the lovely La Schach, for whom he had risked his throne; deserted by the whole court and even by his own son; the monarch welcomed the darkness of the night, the second of his misery, which hid his disgrace from the world.

The owl came, faithful by night as the missel-thrush by day, but Kapchack, in the deepest despondency, could not reply to his remarks.  Twice the owl came back, hoping to find his master somewhat more open to consolation, and twice had to depart unsuccessful.  At last, about midnight, the king, worn out with grief, fell asleep.

Now the same evening the hare, who was upon the hills as usual, as she came by a barn overheard some bats who lived there conversing about the news which they had learnt from their relations who resided in the woods of the vale.  This was nothing less than the revelations the dying hawk had made of the treacherous designs of Ki Ki and the weasel, which, as the owl had suspected, had been partly overheard by the bats.  The hare, in other circumstances, would have rejoiced at the overthrow of King Kapchack, who was no favourite with her race, for he had, once or twice, out of wanton cruelty, pecked weakly leverets to death, just to try the temper of his bill.  But she dreaded lest if he were thrust down the weasel should seize the sovereignty, the weasel, who had already done her so much injury, and was capable of ruining not only herself but her whole nation if once he got the supreme power.

Not knowing what to do herself for the best, away she went down the valley and over the steep ridges in search of a very old hare, quite hoar with age — an astrologer of great reputation in those parts.  For the hares have always been good star-gazers, and the whole race of them, one and all, are not without skill in the mystic sciences, while some are highly charged with knowledge of futurity, and have decided the fate of mighty battles by the mere direction in which they scampered.  The old hare no sooner heard her information than he proceeded to consult the stars, which shone with exceeding brilliance that night, as they often do when the air has been cleared by a storm, and finding, upon taking accurate observations, that the house of Jupiter was threatened by the approach of Saturn to the meridian, he had no difficulty in pronouncing the present time as full of danger and big with fate.

The planets were clearly in combination against King Kapchack, who must, if he desired to avoid extinction, avoid all risks, and hide his head, as it were, in a corner till the aspect of the heavens changed.  Above all things let him not make war or go forth himself into the combat; let him conclude peace, or at least enter into a truce, no matter at what loss of dignity, or how much territory he had to concede to conciliate Choo Hoo.  His person was threatened, the knife was pointed at his heart; could he but wait a while, and tide as it were over the shallows, he might yet resume the full sway of power; but if he exposed his life at this crisis the whole fabric of his kingdom might crumble beneath his feet.

Having thus spoken, the hoary astrologer went off in the direction of Stonehenge, whose stones formed his astrolabe, and the hare, much excited with the communication she had received (confirmed as it was too by the facts of the case), resolved to at once warn the monarch of his danger.  Calling a beetle, she charged him with a message to the king:  That he should listen to the voice of the stars, and conclude peace at no matter what cost, or at least a truce, submitting to be deprived of territory or treasure to any amount or extent, and that above all things he should not venture forth personally to the combat.  If he hearkened he would yet reign; if he closed his ears the evil influence which then threatened him must have its way.  Strictly enjoining the beetle to make haste, and turn neither to the right nor the left, but to speed straight away for the palace, she dismissed him.

The beetle, much pleased to be employed upon so important a business, opened his wing-cases, began to hum, and increasing his pace as he went, flew off at his utmost velocity.  He passed safely over the hills, descended into the valley, sped across the fields and woods, and in an incredibly short space of time approached the goal of his journey.  The wall of the orchard was in sight, he began to repeat his message to himself, so as to be sure and not miss a word of it, when going at this tremendous pace, and as usual, without looking in front, but blundering onwards, he flew with his whole force against a post.  His body, crushed by the impetus of its own weight, rebounded with a snap, and he fell disabled and insensible to the earth.