Not a sound broke the stillness, for even the birds had been driven
to shelter and to silence, and except for the rabbits very few other
live things lived about there, to make any sounds. That afternoon
there were four other live things in the coppice, but they too were
silent, for they were wrapped in deep sleep. The four were a man and
a woman, a horse and a dog, and of all the things in that stretch of
country they were the most unlovely. The man and the woman were
dirty, untidy, red-faced and coarse. Even in their sleep their faces
looked cruel and sullen. The old horse standing patiently by, with
drooping head and hopeless, patient eyes, looked starved and weak.
His poor body was so thin that the bones seemed ready to push through
the skin, on which showed the marks of the blows he had received that
morning. The fourth creature there was a dog, as thin as the horse,
but younger, a lank, yellow, ugly, big-bodied dog, with a clever
head, bright, speaking brown eyes, and as keen a nose for scent as
any dog ever born possessed.
The brown eyes had been closed for a while in slumber, but presently
they opened alertly; a fly had bitten his nose, and the owner of the
nose got up to catch the fly. This done, he looked around him.
He looked with drooped ears and tail at the sleeping man and woman,
with ears a little raised at the old horse, and then with both ears
and tail alertly cocked he looked about him eagerly, even anxiously.
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