red, like blood. Trientje steadily picked her whole basket full and
Poentje sat playing on the way-side grass with a bunch of cornflowers.

In the wood, everything was still: the trees stood firmly in the blaze of
the sun and the young leaves hung gleaming, without stirring. A bird sat
very deep down whistling and its song rang out as in a great church.
Turtle-doves cooed far away. Round the children's ears hummed big fat
bees, buzzing from flower to flower. When the bank was stripped, they
went deeper into the wood, Lowietje going ahead to show the way. They
crept through the trees where it twilighted and where the sun played so
prettily with little golden arrows in the leafage; from there they came
into the high pine-wood. Look, look! There were other boys ... and they
knew where birds lived!

"Listen, Trientje," said Lowietje. "You stay here with Poentje: I'll come
back at once and bring your pinafore full of birds' eggs ... and young
ones."

He fetched out his climbing-cord and, in a flash, all the boys were gone,
behind the trees. Trientje heard them shout and yell and, a little later,
she saw her little brother sitting high up on the slippery trunk of a
beech. She put her hands to her mouth and screamed:

"Lo--wie!..."

It echoed three or four times over the low shoots and against the tall
trees, but Lowietje did not hear.

A man now came striding down the path; he carried a gun on his shoulder.
The boys had only just seen him and, on every side, they came scrambling