Then he could think, though he still could not see, for it was very
dark and silent and strange, and for some minutes he could not
understand why he was out there on the moss instead of being in
Aunt Hester's house at Elton, or at home in Nottingham town.

But he understood it all at once, recollecting what had taken
place, and for a time he felt very, very miserable. It was
startling, too, when from close at hand someone seemed to begin
questioning him strangely by calling out:

"Whoo-who-who-who?"

But at the end of a minute or two he knew it was an owl, and soon
after he was fast asleep and did not think again till the sun was
shining brightly, and he sat up waiting for old David to come and
pull him up on the horse again.

Robin waited, for he was afraid to move.

"If I begin to wander about," he said to himself, "David will not
find me, and he will go home and tell father I'm lost, when all the
time he threw me off the horse because he was afraid and wanted to
save himself."

So the boy sat still, waiting to be fetched. The robin came and
looked at him again, as if wondering that he did not pull up
flowers by the roots and dig, so that worms and grubs might be
found, and finally flitted away.