And now, as I traversed the gloom of these leafy solitudes, what must
come into my head but murders, suicides and death in lonely places. I
remembered that not so long ago the famous Buck and Corinthian Sir
Maurice Vibart had been found shot to death in just such another
desolate place as this. And there was my own long-dead father!

"They fought in a little wood not so far from here!"

These, my uncle George's words, seemed to ring in my ears and,
shivering, I stopped to glance about me full of sick apprehension. For
all I knew, this might be the very wood where my youthful father had
staggered and fallen, to tear at the tender grass with dying fingers;
these sombre, leafy aisles perhaps had echoed to the shot--his gasping
moan that had borne his young spirit up to the Infinite! At this
thought, Horror leapt upon me, wherefore I sought to flee these gloomy
shades, only to trip and fall heavily, so that I lay breathless and
half-stunned, and no will to rise.

It was at this moment, lying with my cheek against Mother Earth, that
I heard it,--a strange, uncanny sound that brought me to my hands and
knees, peering fearfully into the shadows that seemed to be deepening
about me moment by moment.

With breath held in check I crouched there, straining my ears for a
repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever
heard before,--a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out,
now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this
wood must be haunted indeed.