"There’s a wild beast in your woods," said Alfred Pennyworth as he was being driven to the station. It was the only thing he had said during the drive, but as Bruce had been talking non-stop, he hadn’t noticed his companion’s silence.

"Oh, a stray fox or two and some weasels. Nothing more dangerous than that," said Bruce. Alfred Pennyworth said nothing.

"What did you mean about a wild beast?" asked Bruce later, when they were on the platform.

"Oh, nothing. Must have been my imagination," said Alfred. "Here is the train."

That afternoon, Bruce went for a walk through his woodland property, as he often did. He was a keen walker and enjoyed noticing developments in nature — the first bluebells, a new woodpecker’s nest — which he then told everyone about at great length. But what he saw this afternoon was very different from what he had seen before.

On a shelf of smooth stone, overhanging a deep pool among some trees, a boy of about sixteen lay stretched out, drying his wet brown limbs in the sun. His wet hair, parted by having dived in the pool, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that there was almost a tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards Bruce with lazy watchfulness. It was an unexpected sight, and Bruce found himself having to think before he spoke, which was unusual for him. Where on earth could this wild-looking boy have come from? The miller’s wife had lost a child some two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the millstream, but that had been a baby, not a teenage boy.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

(passage based off, H.H. Munro's (Saki's), "Gabriel-Ernest")