Old Grandfather Treasure, who had hobbled up from the stackyard, quoted
texts from Scripture and began to improve the occasion. His daughter-in-
law, with Connie clasped in her arms, sobbed convulsively.
Into the midst of all this excitement suddenly strode Bevis.
"I heard about it down on the quay," he said. "I came up at once. I'll
soon show you what it is!"
He was buckling climbing-irons on to his legs while he spoke, and with
the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs
forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which he
brought down with him.
"It's nothing at all ghostly," he explained. "The fact is I'm fearfully
keen on photographing birds, and I've just got a cinema camera. There's a
sparrow-hawk's nest in the next tree, and I want to take pictures of it;
only I knew the clicking of the cinema business would scare them away
probably for hours, so I made a little mechanical contrivance that would
go on clicking and let them get used to the noise, so that they'd take no
notice when I really went to work.
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