"Have a care, man!" cried Browne angrily. "Meddle with that dog and he'll make victual of thee before thou knowest what ails thee. 'T is ever a poor sign when a man cannot abear dogs or children."
And the two friends, followed by the mastiff and spaniel, walked rapidly away. Two hours passed while Margeson and Britteredge, not greatly in haste, finished their lunch and tied and stacked the reeds already cut. Then shouldering their sickles they leisurely skirted the hill in front of them, and after a little search came upon the pretty sheet of water now called Murdoch's Pond.
"This will be the place," said Margeson looking about him; "but where is pepperpot Browne?"
"Or his dog?" suggested Britteridge slyly.
"Whistle and the beasts will hear us if the men do not," said Margeson suiting the action to the word. No answer followed, and both men together raised a yet shriller note, followed by shouts, halloos, and various noises supposed to carry sound to the farthest limits of space. But each effort died away in dim and distant echoes among the hills, and after a while the men looked at each other in half angry discouragement.
"They've played us a trick," said Margeson; "they're hiding to mock at us, or they've gone back to the village some other way."
"Nay," replied Britteridge pacifically; "they're not such babes as to play tricks like that. See, here are goodly reeds; let us cut and bind some while we tarry, and Browne will be back anon."
Grumbling and unconvinced Margeson still complied, and for a while longer the two worked fitfully, pausing now and again to look about them, to listen, or to shout.
At last, by tacit consent, both threw down their tools, and with slow, half-fearful gaze surveyed the scene. It was a dismal one. The sun had reached the tops of the pines, and already the water lay in black shadow at their feet, rippled by the small, bitter breeze creeping in from seaward, and stirring the sedge into faint whisperings and moanings; night birds, awaking in the depths of the forest, uttered querulous cries, and strange, vague sounds within the covert suggested prowling beast or savage creeping near and nearer.
"Ugh! 't is a grewsome spot as ever I saw," said Margeson as softly as if he feared to be overheard. "Certes the men have gone home some other way, and the sun is setting. Let us be after them, say I."