He found himself glancing from side to side, troubled by the noises in the wood.
A sad light wind crept about the trunks like a whisper; the owls called overhead; sometimes there was a sudden sharp rustle or fall of a branch that startled him.

Yet he knew every track, every tree in that wood.

Up and down that field outside he had followed his father at the plough, a little sickly object of a lad, yet seldom unhappy, so long as childhood lasted, and his mother's temper could be fled from, either at school or in the fields.

Under that boundary hedge to the right he had lain stunned and bleeding all a summer afternoon, after old Westall had thrashed him, his heart scorched within him by the sense of wrong and the craving for revenge.

On that dim path leading down the slope of the wood, George Westall had once knocked him down for disturbing a sitting pheasant.