Excerpt from Silcote of Silcotes His mother stood below at the front door of the cottage, in the moonlight, talking with a man he knew well - Somes, the head keeper. It could not be very late, for she had not been upstairs nor very early, for he could hear his father hurriedly dressing in the room where he slept, a room opposite his mother's and almost immediately he went down and joined the keeper, and the two men passed away into the forest, leaving the woman still standing at the door. Our listener dressed himself with all the rapidity possible, for he knew that the moment had come for realising one of the great wishes of his short life. His mother still stood in the doorway, and she would certainly prevent his going out, while, if he waited till she came upstairs again, he might lose his father's tracks. The bavin pile was close under his window; he opened the window, and, dropping on the fagots, clambered down, and, listening for one instant, with his head near the ground, he sped away after the faint rustling footsteps of his father and the keeper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.