The thicket was a steep tangle almost covering one side of the dell. I thrust the boughs aside and pushed my way through. The trail of feathers showed me my way. Then I found them. The dove lay dead, breast downwards, wings still spread as she had struck the stones, with blood smearing bright over the iris of her neck feathers. On her lay the merlin. The steel ripping-claws were buried deep in the dove’s back, the cruel beak half driven in by the crash. He was still alive. As I bent over them his wings stirred, and the bluish eyelids dropped, disclosing the fierce dark eye.

Cerdic arrived, panting, at my shoulder. “Don’t touch him. He’ll tear your hands. Let me.”

I straightened. “So much for your ring-dove, Cerdic. It’s time we forgot her, isn’t it? No, leave them. They’ll be here when we come back.”

“Come back? Where from?”

I pointed silently to what showed ahead, directly in the path the birds had been taking. A square black gap like a door in the steep ground behind the thicket; an entrance hidden from casual sight, only to be seen if, for some reason, one pushed one’s way in among the tangled branches.

“What of it?” asked Cerdic. “That’s an old mine adit, by the look of it.”

“Yes. That’s what I came to see. Strike a light, and come along.”

He began to protest, but I cut him short. “You can come or not, as you please. But give me a light. And hurry, there isn’t much time.” As I began to push my way towards the adit I heard him, muttering still, dragging up handfuls of dry stuff to make a torch.

Just inside the adit there was a pile of debris and fallen stone where the timber props had rotted away, but beyond this the shaft was smooth enough, leading more or less levelly into the heart of the hill. I could walk pretty nearly upright, and Cerdic, who was small, had to stoop only slightly. The flare of the makeshift torch threw our shadows grotesquely in front of us. It showed the grooves in the floor where loads had been dragged to daylight, and on walls and roof the marks of the picks and chisels that had made the tunnel.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Cerdic’s voice, behind me, was sharp with nerves. “Look, let’s get back. These places aren’t safe. That roof could come in.”

“It won’t. Keep that torch going,” I said curtly, and went on.