the glittering gossamer of thought was swept aside, and the young fellow was all ear and eye.  The wind had dropped for some time, and the silence was intense; that solemn hush seemed to pervade the forest which some poet has attributed to the cessation of spiritual life, as though the haunters of the glade were waiting for the resumption of their occupations until the interloping mortal should pass by.  Nothing stirred, or, if so, it was motion without sound, as when the full-feathered owl slid softly through the midnight air above him.  Not a dead leaf fell; and where the leaves had fallen there they lay.  How was it, then, that a twig broke?  The deer were couched; the pheasants sat at roost, their heads beneath that splendid coverlet, their wing; and though there were creeping things which even midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness, Yorke had imbibed enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was produced by none of these.  A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different fashion.  Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then cautious footsteps fell upon the frosty leaves, and, with a light leap on the bank that fringed the copse, the poacher stood in the open.

That such he was, Yorke had no doubt whatever; the moonlight streamed full upon him, and showed him to be none of the Crompton keepers, unless, indeed, he was disguised.  For an instant, it passed across his mind that this might be Walter Grange himself—­he was about the same height and build—­come to play a trick upon him to test his courage, for the man’s face was blackened like a burglar’s; but this idea was dismissed as soon as entertained.  The keeper, he reflected, thought far too seriously of the night’s doings to make jest of them, and besides, he could never have sprung upon the bank as yonder fellow did, his limbs, though sturdy, being stiff with age and occasional rheumatism.  The intruder seemed quite alone, and it was probable, while his confederates paid attention to the pheasants in the Home Park, that he was bent upon making a private raid upon the sleeping water-fowl.  He had no gun, however, nor, as far as Yorke could make out, any other weapon; and as soon as he had got near enough to the pond to admit of it the watcher sprang out from beneath the shadow of the oak, and placed himself between the stranger and the copse from which he had emerged.  Yorke was the taller by full six inches, and believing himself to be more than a match for his antagonist, had not so much as laid finger on his concealed weapon; but if he had now any thought of doing so, it was too late; for, with a cry of eager rage, the man turned at once, and sprang at him like a tiger.  It needed all his skill and coolness to parry the fierce blows which fell upon him like hail, and which he had scarcely time to return.