The keeper never heard a sound.

He was an old man--a man who had been on the estate all his life--and had come in late in the evening after a long round.

He sat by the fire of split logs and enjoyed the warmth after the bitter cold and frost; and, as he himself confessed, took an extra glass in consideration of the severity of the weather.
His wife was old and deaf.

Neither of them heard the guns nor the dogs.
Those in the kennels close to the cottage, and very likely one or more indoors, must have barked at the noise of the shooting.

But if any dim sense of the uproar did reach the keeper's ear he put it down to the moon, at which dogs will bay.