A Fatal Shaft

FROM THE CHAPTER ENTITLED ' A FATAL SHAFT. '

Purkess turned to his task of stripping the last few branches of their bark, but he worked as if his mind were elsewhere. At last he threw down the knife saying, " I don't like it. Something is amiss. Where is Red Willum?"
He set off down the glade and Dick followed. The two went along a winding track. Suddenly Purkess stopped and pointed to something ahead, lying on the path.
" Some one's dropped his cloak, " said Dick.
" More than a cloak, " said his father. " There's ill work done here."
The body of a man lay there, one hand clutching at an arrow protruding from his breast, the shaft broken short. No need to ask who he was. The face of Rufus was no longer red, but his hair gleamed in the rays of the setting sun as brightly as they had seen it when he was alive.

Purkess, looking down on the corpse, talked as if to himself. " 'Tis not for the likes of us to touch the king's body, but someone must put it in safety lest foxes and other vermin have their will with it." He turned to Dick saying, " Put the pony in the cart, lad, and bring it along, or will you wait by this while I fetch it? "

But Dick was off, running hard. Young as he was, this was not by any means his first sight of a dead man. Before now he had seen bodies hanging from trees ( there was not infrequently one dangling from that sinister horizontal branch of the Lyndhurst tree), but to see the king lying dead there on the grass filled him with dismay. Soon he was returning, making the pony trot down the slope. Purkess smiled a welcome.