It was with a light heart and a pleasing consciousness of holiday that I
set out from the inn at Allermuir to tramp my fifteen miles into the
unknown. I walked slowly, for I carried my equipment on my back—my
basket, fly-books and rods, my plaid of Grant tartan (for I boast myself
a distant kinsman of that house), and my great staff, which had tried
ere then the front of the steeper Alps. A small valise with books and
some changes of linen clothing had been sent on ahead in the shepherd's
own hands. It was yet early April, and before me lay four weeks of
freedom—twenty-eight blessed days in which to take fish and smoke the
pipe of idleness. The Lent term had pulled me down, a week of modest
enjoyment thereafter in town had finished the work; and I drank in the
sharp moorish air like a thirsty man who has been forwandered among
deserts.
I am a man of varied tastes and a score of interests. As an
undergraduate I had been filled with the old mania for the complete
life. I distinguished myself in the Schools, rowed in my college eight,
and reached the distinction of practising for three weeks in the Trials.
I had dabbled in a score of learned activities, and when the time came
that I won the inevitable St. Chad's fellowship on my chaotic
acquirements, and I found myself compelled to select if I would pursue a
scholar's life, I had some toil in finding my vocation. In the end I
resolved that the ancient life of the North, of the Celts and the
Northmen and the unknown Pictish tribes, held for me the chief
fascination. I had acquired a smattering of Gaelic, having been brought
up as a boy in Lochaber, and now I set myself to increase my store of
languages. I mastered Erse and Icelandic, and my first book—a monograph
on the probable Celtic elements in the Eddic songs—brought me the
praise of scholars and the deputy-professor's chair of Northern
Antiquities. So much for Oxford. My vacations had been spent mainly in
the North—in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles, in Scandinavia and
Iceland, once even in the far limits of Finland. I was a keen sportsman
of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle,
and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men. April
has ever seemed to me the finest season of the year even in our cold
northern altitudes, and the memory of many bright Aprils had brought me
up from the South on the night before to Allerfoot, whence a dogcart had
taken me up Glen Aller to the inn at Allermuir; and now the same desire
had set me on the heather with my face to the cold brown hills.
You are to picture a sort of plateau, benty and rock-strewn, running
ridge-wise above a chain of little peaty lochs and a vast tract of
inexorable bog. In a mile the ridge ceased in a shoulder of hill, and
over this lay the head of another glen, with the same doleful
accompaniment of sunless lochs, mosses, and a shining and resolute
water. East and west and north, in every direction save the south, rose
walls of gashed and serrated hills. It was a grey day with blinks of
sun, and when a ray chanced to fall on one of the great dark faces,
lines of light and colour sprang into being which told of mica and
granite. I was in high spirits, as on the eve of holiday; I had
breakfasted excellently on eggs and salmon-steaks; I had no cares to
speak of, and my prospects were not uninviting. But in spite of myself
the landscape began to take me in thrall and crush me. The silent
vanished peoples of the hills seemed to be stirring; dark primeval faces
seemed to stare at me from behind boulders and jags of rock. The place
was so still, so free from the cheerful clamour of nesting birds, that
it seemed a temenos sacred to some old-world god. At my feet the lochs
lapped ceaselessly; but the waters were so dark that one could not see
bottom a foot from the edge. On my right the links of green told of
snake-like mires waiting to crush the unwary wanderer. It seemed to me
for the moment a land of death, where the tongues of the dead cried
aloud for recognition.
My whole morning's walk was full of such fancies. I lit a pipe to cheer
me, but the things would not be got rid of. I thought of the Gaels who
had held those fastnesses; I thought of the Britons before them, who
yielded to their advent. They were all strong peoples in their day, and
now they had gone the way of the earth. They had left their mark on the
levels of the glens and on the more habitable uplands, both in names and
in actual forts, and graves where men might still dig curios. But the
hills—that black stony amphitheatre before me—it seemed strange that
the hills bore no traces of them. And then with some uneasiness I
reflected on that older and stranger race who were said to have held the
hill-tops. The Picts, the Picti—what in the name of goodness were they?
They had troubled me in all my studies, a sort of blank wall to put an
end to speculation. We knew nothing of them save certain strange names
which men called Pictish, the names of those hills in front of me—the
Muneraw, the Yirnie, the Calmarton. They were the corpus vile for
learned experiment; but Heaven alone knew what dark abyss of savagery
once yawned in the midst of this desert.
And then I remembered the crazy theories of a pupil of mine at St
Chad's, the son of a small landowner on the Aller, a young gentleman who
had spent his substance too freely at Oxford, and was now dreeing his
weird in the Backwoods. He had been no scholar but a certain imagination
marked all his doings, and of a Sunday night he would come and talk to
me of the North. The Picts were his special subject, and his ideas were
mad. "Listen to me," he would say, when I had mixed him toddy and given
him one of my cigars; "I believe there are traces—ay, and more than
traces—of an old culture lurking in those hills and waiting to be
discovered. We never hear of the Picts being driven from the hills. The
Britons drove them from the lowlands, the Gaels from Ireland did the
same for the Britons; but the hills were left unmolested. We hear of no
one going near them except outlaws and tinklers. And in that very place
you have the strangest mythology. Take the story of the Brownie. What is
that but the story of a little swart man of uncommon strength and
cleverness, who does good and ill indiscriminately, and then disappears?
There are many scholars, as you yourself confess, who think that the
origin of the Brownie was in some mad belief in the old race of the
Picts, which still survived somewhere in the hills. And do we not hear
of the Brownie in authentic records right down to the year 1756? After
that, when people grew more incredulous, it is natural that the belief
should have begun to die out; but I do not see why stray traces should
not have survived till late."
"Do you not see what that means?" I had said in mock gravity. "Those
same hills are, if anything, less known now than they were a hundred
years ago. Why should not your Picts or Brownies be living to this day?"
"Why not, indeed?" he had rejoined, in all seriousness.
I laughed, and he went to his rooms and returned with a large
leather-bound book. It was lettered, in the rococo style of a young
man's taste, 'Glimpses of the Unknown,' and some of the said glimpses he
proceeded to impart to me. It was not pleasant reading; indeed, I had
rarely heard anything so well fitted to shatter sensitive nerves. The
early part consisted of folk-tales and folk-sayings, some of them wholly
obscure, some of them with a glint of meaning, but all of them with some
hint of a mystery in the hills. I heard the Brownie story in countless
versions. Now the thing was a friendly little man, who wore grey
breeches and lived on brose; now he was a twisted being, the sight of
which made the ewes miscarry in the lambing-time. But the second part
was the stranger, for it was made up of actual tales, most of them with
date and place appended. It was a most Bedlamite catalogue of horrors,
which, if true, made the wholesome moors a place instinct with tragedy.
Some told of children carried away from villages, even from towns, on
the verge of the uplands. In almost every case they were girls, and the
strange fact was their utter disappearance. Two little girls would be
coming home from school, would be seen last by a neighbour just where
the road crossed a patch of heath or entered a wood and then—no human
eye ever saw them again. Children's cries had startled outlying
shepherds in the night, and when they had rushed to the door they could
hear nothing but the night wind. The instances of such disappearances
were not very common—perhaps once in twenty years—but they were
confined to this one tract of country, and came in a sort of fixed
progression from the middle of last century, when the record began. But
this was only one side of the history. The latter part was all devoted
to a chronicle of crimes which had gone unpunished, seeing that no hand
had ever been traced. The list was fuller in last century;[1] in the
earlier years of the present it had dwindled; then came a revival about
the 'Fifties; and now again in our own time it had sunk low. At the
little cottage of Auchterbrean, on the roadside in Glen Aller, a
labourer's wife had been found pierced to the heart. It was thought to
be a case of a woman's jealousy, and her neighbour was accused,
convicted, and hanged. The woman, to be sure, denied the charge with her
last breath; but circumstantial evidence seemed sufficiently strong
against her. Yet some people in the glen believed her guiltless. In
particular, the carrier who had found the dead woman declared that the
way in which her neighbour received the news was a sufficient proof of
innocence; and the doctor who was first summoned professed himself
unable to tell with what instrument the wound had been given. But this
was all before the days of expert evidence, so the woman had been hanged
without scruple. Then there had been another story of peculiar horror,
telling of the death of an old man at some little lonely shieling called
Carrickfey. But at this point I had risen in protest, and made to drive
the young idiot from my room.
"It was my grandfather who collected most of them," he said. "He had
theories,[2] but people called him mad, so he was wise enough to hold
his tongue. My father declares the whole thing mania; but I rescued the
book, had it bound, and added to the collection. It is a queer hobby;
but, as I say, I have theories, and there are more things in heaven and
earth——"
But at this he heard a friend's voice in the Quad., and dived out,
leaving the banal quotation unfinished.
Strange though it may seem, this madness kept coming back to me as I
crossed the last few miles of moor. I was now on a rough tableland, the
watershed between two lochs, and beyond and above me rose the stony
backs of the hills. The burns fell down in a chaos of granite boulders,
and huge slabs of grey stone lay flat and tumbled in the heather. The
full waters looked prosperously for my fishing, and I began to forget
all fancies in anticipation of sport.
Then suddenly in a hollow of land I came on a ruined cottage. It had
been a very small place, but the walls were still half-erect, and the
little moorland garden was outlined on the turf. A lonely apple tree,
twisted and gnarled with winds, stood in the midst.
From higher up on the hill I heard a loud roar, and I knew my excellent
friend the shepherd of Farawa, who had come thus far to meet me. He
greeted me with the boisterous embarrassment which was his way of
prefacing hospitality. A grave reserved man at other times, on such
occasions he thought it proper to relapse into hilarity. I fell into
step with him, and we set off for his dwelling. But first I had the
curiosity to look back to the tumble-down cottage and ask him its name.
A queer look came into his eyes. "They ca' the place Carrickfey," he
said. "Naebody has daured to bide there this twenty year sin'—but I see
ye ken the story." And, as if glad to leave the subject, he hastened to
discourse on fishing.
The shepherd was a masterful man; tall, save for the stoop which belongs
to all moorland folk, and active as a wild goat. He was not a new
importation, nor did he belong to the place; for his people had lived in
the remote Borders, and he had come as a boy to this shieling of Farawa.
He was unmarried, but an elderly sister lived with him and cooked his
meals. He was reputed to be extraordinarily skilful in his trade; I know
for a fact that he was in his way a keen sportsman; and his few
neighbours gave him credit for a sincere piety. Doubtless this last
report was due in part to his silence, for after his first greeting he
was wont to relapse into a singular taciturnity. As we strode across the
heather he gave me a short outline of his year's lambing. "Five pair o'
twins yestreen, twae this morn; that makes thirty-five yowes that hae
lambed since the Sabbath. I'll dae weel if God's willin'." Then, as I
looked towards the hilltops whence the thin mist of morn was trailing,
he followed my gaze. "See," he said with uplifted crook—"see that
sicht. Is that no what is written of in the Bible when it says, 'The
mountains do smoke.'" And with this piece of exegesis he finished his
talk, and in a little we were at the cottage.
It was a small enough dwelling in truth, and yet large for a moorland
house, for it had a garret below the thatch, which was given up to my
sole enjoyment. Below was the wide kitchen with box-beds, and next to it
the inevitable second room, also with its cupboard sleeping-places. The
interior was very clean, and yet I remember to have been struck with the
faint musty smell which is inseparable from moorland dwellings. The
kitchen pleased me best, for there the great rafters were black with
peat-reek, and the uncovered stone floor, on which the fire gleamed
dully, gave an air of primeval simplicity. But the walls spoiled all,
for tawdry things of to-day had penetrated even there. Some grocers'
almanacs—years old—hung in places of honour, and an extraordinary
lithograph of the Royal Family in its youth. And this, mind you, between
crooks and fishing-rods and old guns, and horns of sheep and deer.
The life for the first day or two was regular and placid. I was up
early, breakfasted on porridge (a dish which I detest), and then off to
the lochs and streams. At first my sport prospered mightily. With a
drake-wing I killed a salmon of seventeen pounds, and the next day had a
fine basket of trout from a hill-burn. Then for no earthly reason the
weather changed. A bitter wind came out of the northeast, bringing
showers of snow and stinging hail, and lashing the waters into storm. It
was now farewell to fly-fishing. For a day or two I tried trolling with
the minnow on the lochs, but it was poor sport, for I had no boat, and
the edges were soft and mossy. Then in disgust I gave up the attempt,
went back to the cottage, lit my biggest pipe, and sat down with a book
to await the turn of the weather.
The shepherd was out from morning till night at his work, and when he
came in at last, dog-tired, his face would be set and hard, and his eyes
heavy with sleep. The strangeness of the man grew upon me. He had a
shrewd brain beneath his thatch of hair, for I had tried him once or
twice, and found him abundantly intelligent. He had some smattering of
an education, like all Scottish peasants, and, as I have said, he was
deeply religious. I set him down as a fine type of his class, sober,
serious, keenly critical, free from the bondage of superstition. But I
rarely saw him, and our talk was chiefly in monosyllables—short
interjected accounts of the number of lambs dead or alive on the hill.
Then he would produce a pencil and note-book, and be immersed in some
calculation; and finally he would be revealed sleeping heavily in his
chair, till his sister wakened him, and he stumbled off to bed.
So much for the ordinary course of life; but one day—the second I think
of the bad weather—the extraordinary happened. The storm had passed in
the afternoon into a resolute and blinding snow, and the shepherd,
finding it hopeless on the hill, came home about three o'clock. I could
make out from his way of entering that he was in a great temper. He
kicked his feet savagely against the door-post. Then he swore at his
dogs, a thing I had never heard him do before. "Hell!" he cried, "can ye
no keep out o' my road, ye britts?" Then he came sullenly into the
kitchen, thawed his numbed hands at the fire, and sat down to his meal.
I made some aimless remark about the weather.
"Death to man and beast," he grunted. "I hae got the sheep doun frae the
hill, but the lambs will never thole this. We maun pray that it will no
last."
His sister came in with some dish. "Margit," he cried, "three lambs
away this morning, and three deid wi' the hole in the throat."
The woman's face visibly paled. "Guid help us, Adam; that hasna happened
this three year."
"It has happened noo," he said, surlily. "But, by God! if it happens
again I'll gang mysel' to the Scarts o' the Muneraw."
"O Adam!" the woman cried shrilly, "haud your tongue. Ye kenna wha hears
ye." And with a frightened glance at me she left the room.
I asked no questions, but waited till the shepherd's anger should cool.
But the cloud did not pass so lightly. When he had finished his dinner
he pulled his chair to the fire and sat staring moodily. He made some
sort of apology to me for his conduct. "I'm sore troubled, sir; but I'm
vexed ye should see me like this. Maybe things will be better the morn."
And then, lighting his short black pipe, he resigned himself to his
meditations.
But he could not keep quiet. Some nervous unrest seemed to have
possessed the man. He got up with a start and went to the window, where
the snow was drifting unsteadily past. As he stared out into the storm I
heard him mutter to himself, "Three away, God help me, and three wi'
the hole in the throat."
Then he turned round to me abruptly. I was jotting down notes for an
article I contemplated in the 'Revue Celtique,' so my thoughts were far
away from the present. The man recalled me by demanding fiercely, "Do ye
believe in God?"
I gave him some sort of answer in the affirmative.
"Then do ye believe in the Devil?" he asked.
The reply must have been less satisfactory, for he came forward and
flung himself violently into the chair before me.
"What do ye ken about it?" he cried. "You that bides in a southern toun,
what can ye ken o' the God that works in thae hills and the Devil—ay,
the manifold devils—that He suffers to bide here? I tell ye, man, that
if ye had seen what I have seen ye wad be on your knees at this moment
praying to God to pardon your unbelief. There are devils at the back o'
every stane and hidin' in every cleuch, and it's by the grace o' God
alone that a man is alive upon the earth." His voice had risen high and
shrill, and then suddenly he cast a frightened glance towards the window
and was silent.
I began to think that the man's wits were unhinged, and the thought did
not give me satisfaction. I had no relish for the prospect of being left
alone in this moorland dwelling with the cheerful company of a maniac.
But his next movements reassured me. He was clearly only dead-tired, for
he fell sound asleep in his chair, and by the time his sister brought
tea and wakened him, he seemed to have got the better of his excitement.
When the window was shuttered and the lamp lit, I sat myself again to
the completion of my notes. The shepherd had got out his Bible, and was
solemnly reading with one great finger travelling down the lines. He was
smoking, and whenever some text came home to him with power he would
make pretence to underline it with the end of the stem. Soon I had
finished the work I desired, and, my mind being full of my pet hobby, I
fell into an inquisitive mood, and began to question the solemn man
opposite on the antiquities of the place.
He stared stupidly at me when I asked him concerning monuments or
ancient weapons.
"I kenna," said he. "There's a heap o' queer things in the hills."
"This place should be a centre for such relics. You know that the name
of the hill behind the house, as far as I can make it out, means the
'Place of the Little Men.' It is a good Gaelic word, though there is
some doubt about its exact interpretation. But clearly the Gaelic
peoples did not speak of themselves when they gave the name; they must
have referred to some older and stranger population."
The shepherd looked at me dully, as not understanding.
"It is partly this fact—besides the fishing, of course—which interests
me in this countryside," said I, gaily.
Again he cast the same queer frightened glance towards the window. "If
ye'll tak the advice of an aulder man," he said, slowly, "ye'll let well
alane and no meddle wi' uncanny things."
I laughed pleasantly, for at last I had found out my hard-headed host in
a piece of childishness. "Why, I thought that you of all men would be
free from superstition."
"What do ye call supersteetion?" he asked.
"A belief in old wives' tales," said I, "a trust in the crude
supernatural and the patently impossible."
He looked at me beneath his shaggy brows. "How do ye ken what is
impossible? Mind ye, sir, ye're no in the toun just now, but in the
thick of the wild hills."
"But, hang it all, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that you
believe in that sort of thing? I am prepared for many things up here,
but not for the Brownie,—though, to be sure, if one could meet him in
the flesh, it would be rather pleasant than otherwise, for he was a
companionable sort of fellow."
"When a thing pits the fear o' death on a man he aye speaks well of it."
It was true—the Eumenides and the Good Folk over again; and I awoke
with interest to the fact that the conversation was getting into strange
channels.
The shepherd moved uneasily in his chair. "I am a man that fears God,
and has nae time for daft stories; but I havena traivelled the hills for
twenty years wi' my een shut. If I say that I could tell ye stories o'
faces seen in the mist, and queer things that have knocked against me in
the snaw, wad ye believe me? I wager ye wadna. Ye wad say I had been
drunk, and yet I am a God-fearing temperate man."
He rose and went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and brought out something
in his hand, which he held out to me. I took it with some curiosity,
and found that it was a flint arrow-head.
Clearly a flint arrow-head, and yet like none that I had ever seen in
any collection. For one thing it was larger, and the barb less clumsily
thick. More, the chipping was new, or comparatively so; this thing had
not stood the wear of fifteen hundred years among the stones of the
hillside. Now there are, I regret to say, institutions which manufacture
primitive relics; but it is not hard for a practised eye to see the
difference. The chipping has either a regularity and a balance which is
unknown in the real thing, or the rudeness has been overdone, and the
result is an implement incapable of harming a mortal creature. But this
was the real thing if it ever existed; and yet—I was prepared to swear
on my reputation that it was not half a century old.
"Where did you get this?" I asked with some nervousness.
"I hae a story about that," said the shepherd. "Outside the door there
ye can see a muckle flat stane aside the buchts. One simmer nicht I was
sitting there smoking till the dark, and I wager there was naething on
the stane then. But that same nicht I awoke wi' a queer thocht, as if
there were folk moving around the hoose—folk that didna mak' muckle
noise. I mind o' lookin' out o' the windy, and I could hae sworn I saw
something black movin' amang the heather and intil the buchts. Now I had
maybe threescore o' lambs there that nicht, for I had to tak' them many
miles off in the early morning. Weel, when I gets up about four o'clock
and gangs out, as I am passing the muckle stane I finds this bit errow.
'That's come here in the nicht,' says I, and I wunnered a wee and put it
in my pouch. But when I came to my faulds what did I see? Five o' my
best hoggs were away, and three mair were lying deid wi' a hole in their throat."
"Who in the world——?" I began.
"Dinna ask," said he. "If I aince sterted to speir about thae maitters,
I wadna keep my reason."
"Then that was what happened on the hill this morning?"
"Even sae, and it has happened mair than aince sin' that time. It's the
most uncanny slaughter, for sheep-stealing I can understand, but no this
pricking o' the puir beasts' wizands. I kenna how they dae't either, for
it's no wi' a knife or any common tool."
"Have you never tried to follow the thieves?"
"Have I no?" he asked, grimly. "If it had been common sheep-stealers I
wad hae had them by the heels, though I had followed them a hundred
miles. But this is no common. I've tracked them, and it's ill they are
to track; but I never got beyond ae place, and that was the Scarts o'
the Muneraw that ye've heard me speak o'."
"But who in Heaven's name are the people? Tinklers or poachers or what?"
"Ay," said he, drily. "Even so. Tinklers and poachers whae wark wi'
stane errows and kill sheep by a hole in their throat. Lord, I kenna
what they are, unless the Muckle Deil himsel'."
The conversation had passed beyond my comprehension. In this prosaic
hard-headed man I had come on the dead-rock of superstition and blind
fear.
"That is only the story of the Brownie over again, and he is an exploded
myth," I said, laughing.
"Are ye the man that exploded it?" said the shepherd, rudely. "I trow
no, neither you nor ony ither. My bonny man, if ye lived a twal-month in
thae hills, ye wad sing safter about exploded myths, as ye call them."
"I tell you what I would do," said I. "If I lost sheep as you lose
them, I would go up the Scarts of the Muneraw and never rest till I had
settled the question once and for all." I spoke hotly, for I was vexed
by the man's childish fear.
"I daresay ye wad," he said, slowly. "But then I am no you, and maybe I
ken mair o' what is in the Scarts o' the Muneraw. Maybe I ken that
whilk, if ye kenned it, wad send ye back to the South Country wi' your
hert in your mouth. But, as I say, I am no sae brave as you, for I saw
something in the first year o' my herding here which put the terror o'
God on me, and makes me a fearfu' man to this day. Ye ken the story o'
the gudeman o' Carrickfey?"
I nodded.
"Weel, I was the man that fand him. I had seen the deid afore and I've
seen them since. But never have I seen aucht like the look in that man's
een. What he saw at his death I may see the morn, so I walk before the
Lord in fear."
Then he rose and stretched himself. "It's bedding-time, for I maun be up
at three," and with a short good night he left the room.
The next morning was fine, for the snow had been intermittent, and had
soon melted except in the high corries. True, it was deceptive weather,
for the wind had gone to the rainy south-west, and the masses of cloud
on that horizon boded ill for the afternoon. But some days' inaction had
made me keen for a chance of sport, so I rose with the shepherd and set
out for the day.
He asked me where I proposed to begin.
I told him the tarn called the Loch o' the Threshes, which lies over the
back of the Muneraw on another watershed. It is on the ground of the
Rhynns Forest, and I had fished it of old from the Forest House. I knew
the merits of the trout, and I knew its virtues in a south-west wind, so
I had resolved to go thus far afield.
The shepherd heard the name in silence. "Your best road will be ower
that rig, and syne on to the water o' Caulds. Keep abune the moss till
ye come to the place they ca' the Nick o' the Threshes. That will take
ye to the very loch-side, but it's a lang road and a sair."
The morning was breaking over the bleak hills. Little clouds drifted
athwart the corries, and wisps of haze fluttered from the peaks. A great
rosy flush lay over one side of the glen, which caught the edge of the
sluggish bog-pools and turned them to fire. Never before had I seen the
mountain-land so clear, for far back into the east and west I saw
mountain-tops set as close as flowers in a border, black crags seamed
with silver lines which I knew for mighty waterfalls, and below at my
feet the lower slopes fresh with the dewy green of spring. A name stuck
in my memory from the last night's talk.
"Where are the Scarts of the Muneraw?" I asked.
The shepherd pointed to the great hill which bears the name, and which
lies, a huge mass, above the watershed.
"D'ye see yon corrie at the east that runs straucht up the side? It
looks a bit scart, but it's sae deep that it's aye derk at the bottom
o't. Weel, at the tap o' the rig it meets anither corrie that runs doun
the ither side, and that one they ca' the Scarts. There is a sort o'
burn in it that flows intil the Dule and sae intil the Aller, and,
indeed, if ye were gaun there it wad be from Aller Glen that your best
road wad lie. But it's an ill bit, and ye'll be sair guidit if ye
try't."
There he left me and went across the glen, while I struck upwards over
the ridge. At the top I halted and looked down on the wide glen of the
Caulds, which there is little better than a bog, but lower down grows
into a green pastoral valley. The great Muneraw still dominated the
landscape, and the black scaur on its side seemed blacker than before.
The place fascinated me, for in that fresh morning air the shepherd's
fears seemed monstrous. "Some day," said I to myself, "I will go and
explore the whole of that mighty hill." Then I descended and struggled
over the moss, found the Nick, and in two hours' time was on the loch's edge.
I have little in the way of good to report of the fishing. For perhaps
one hour the trout took well; after that they sulked steadily for the
day. The promise, too, of fine weather had been deceptive. By midday the
rain was falling in that soft soaking fashion which gives no hope of
clearing. The mist was down to the edge of the water, and I cast my
flies into a blind sea of white. It was hopeless work, and yet from a
sort of ill-temper I stuck to it long after my better judgment had
warned me of its folly. At last, about three in the afternoon, I struck
my camp, and prepared myself for a long and toilsome retreat.
And long and toilsome it was beyond anything I had ever encountered. Had
I had a vestige of sense I would have followed the burn from the loch
down to the Forest House. The place was shut up, but the keeper would
gladly have given me shelter for the night. But foolish pride was too
strong in me. I had found my road in mist before, and could do it again.
Before I got to the top of the hill I had repented my decision; when I
got there I repented it more. For below me was a dizzy chaos of grey;
there was no landmark visible; and before me I knew was the bog through
which the Caulds Water twined. I had crossed it with some trouble in the
morning, but then I had light to pick my steps. Now I could only stumble
on, and in five minutes I might be in a bog-hole, and in five more in a
better world.
But there was no help to be got from hesitation, so with a rueful
courage I set off. The place was if possible worse than I had feared.
Wading up to the knees with nothing before you but a blank wall of mist
and the cheerful consciousness that your next step may be your
last—such was my state for one weary mile. The stream itself was high,
and rose to my armpits, and once and again I only saved myself by a
violent leap backwards from a pitiless green slough. But at last it was
past, and I was once more on the solid ground of the hillside.
Now, in the thick weather I had crossed the glen much lower down than in
the morning, and the result was that the hill on which I stood was one
of the giants which, with the Muneraw for centre, guard the watershed.
Had I taken the proper way, the Nick o' the Threshes would have led me
to the Caulds, and then once over the bog a little ridge was all that
stood between me and the glen of Farawa. But instead I had come a wild
cross-country road, and was now, though I did not know it, nearly as far
from my destination as at the start.
Well for me that I did not know, for I was wet and dispirited, and had I
not fancied myself all but home, I should scarcely have had the energy
to make this last ascent. But soon I found it was not the little ridge I
had expected. I looked at my watch and saw that it was five o'clock.
When, after the weariest climb, I lay on a piece of level ground which
seemed the top, I was not surprised to find that it was now seven. The
darkening must be at hand, and sure enough the mist seemed to be
deepening into a greyish black. I began to grow desperate. Here was I on
the summit of some infernal mountain, without any certainty where my
road lay. I was lost with a vengeance, and at the thought I began to be
acutely afraid.
I took what seemed to me the way I had come, and began to descend
steeply. Then something made me halt, and the next instant I was lying
on my face trying painfully to retrace my steps. For I had found myself
slipping, and before I could stop, my feet were dangling over a
precipice with Heaven alone knows how many yards of sheer mist between
me and the bottom. Then I tried keeping the ridge, and took that to the
right, which I thought would bring me nearer home. It was no good trying
to think out a direction, for in the fog my brain was running round, and
I seemed to stand on a pin-point of space where the laws of the compass
had ceased to hold.
It was the roughest sort of walking, now stepping warily over acres of
loose stones, now crawling down the face of some battered rock, and now
wading in the long dripping heather. The soft rain had begun to fall
again, which completed my discomfort. I was now seriously tired, and,
like all men who in their day have bent too much over books, I began to
feel it in my back. My spine ached, and my breath came in short broken
pants. It was a pitiable state of affairs for an honest man who had
never encountered much grave discomfort. To ease myself I was compelled
to leave my basket behind me, trusting to return and find it, if I
should ever reach safety and discover on what pathless hill I had been
strayed. My rod I used as a staff, but it was of little use, for my
fingers were getting too numb to hold it.
Suddenly from the blankness I heard a sound as of human speech. At first
I thought it mere craziness—the cry of a weasel or a hill-bird
distorted by my ears. But again it came, thick and faint, as through
acres of mist, and yet clearly the sound of "articulate-speaking men."
In a moment I lost my despair and cried out in answer. This was some
forwandered traveller like myself, and between us we could surely find
some road to safety. So I yelled back at the pitch of my voice and
waited intently.
But the sound ceased, and there was utter silence again. Still I waited,
and then from some place much nearer came the same soft mumbling speech.
I could make nothing of it. Heard in that drear place it made the nerves
tense and the heart timorous. It was the strangest jumble of vowels and
consonants I had ever met.
A dozen solutions flashed through my brain. It was some maniac talking
Jabberwock to himself. It was some belated traveller whose wits had
given out in fear. Perhaps it was only some shepherd who was amusing
himself thus, and whiling the way with nonsense. Once again I cried out
and waited.
Then suddenly in the hollow trough of mist before me, where things could
still be half discerned, there appeared a figure. It was little and
squat and dark; naked, apparently, but so rough with hair that it wore
the appearance of a skin-covered being. It crossed my line of vision,
not staying for a moment, but in its face and eyes there seemed to lurk
an elder world of mystery and barbarism, a troll-like life which was too
horrible for words.
The shepherd's fear came back on me like a thunderclap. For one awful
instant my legs failed me, and I had almost fallen. The next I had
turned and ran shrieking up the hill.
If he who may read this narrative has never felt the force of an
overmastering terror, then let him thank his Maker and pray that he
never may. I am no weak child, but a strong grown man, accredited in
general with sound sense and little suspected of hysterics. And yet I
went up that brae-face with my heart fluttering like a bird and my
throat aching with fear. I screamed in short dry gasps; involuntarily,
for my mind was beyond any purpose. I felt that beast-like clutch at my
throat; those red eyes seemed to be staring at me from the mist; I heard
ever behind and before and on all sides the patter of those inhuman
feet.
Before I knew I was down, slipping over a rock and falling some dozen
feet into a soft marshy hollow. I was conscious of lying still for a
second and whimpering like a child. But as I lay there I awoke to the
silence of the place. There was no sound of pursuit; perhaps they had
lost my track and given up. My courage began to return, and from this it
was an easy step to hope. Perhaps after all it had been merely an
illusion, for folk do not see clearly in the mist, and I was already
done with weariness.
But even as I lay in the green moss and began to hope, the faces of my
pursuers grew up through the mist. I stumbled madly to my feet; but I
was hemmed in, the rock behind and my enemies before. With a cry I
rushed forward, and struck wildly with my rod at the first dark body.
It was as if I had struck an animal, and the next second the thing was
wrenched from my grasp. But still they came no nearer. I stood trembling
there in the centre of those malignant devils, my brain a mere
weathercock and my heart crushed shapeless with horror. At last the end
came, for with the vigour of madness I flung myself on the nearest, and
we rolled on the ground. Then the monstrous things seemed to close over
me, and with a choking cry I passed into unconsciousness.
There is an unconsciousness that is not wholly dead, where a man feels
numbly and the body lives without the brain. I was beyond speech or
thought, and yet I felt the upward or downward motion as the way lay in
hill or glen, and I most assuredly knew when the open air was changed
for the close underground. I could feel dimly that lights were flared in
my face, and that I was laid in some bed on the earth. Then with the
stopping of movement the real sleep of weakness seized me, and for long
I knew nothing of this mad world.
* * * * * * *
Morning came over the moors with birdsong and the glory of fine
weather. The streams were still rolling in spate, but the hill-pastures
were alight with dawn, and the little seams of snow were glistening like
white fire. A ray from the sunrise cleft its path somehow into the
abyss, and danced on the wall above my couch. It caught my eye as I
wakened, and for long I lay crazily wondering what it meant. My head was
splitting with pain, and in my heart was the same fluttering nameless
fear. I did not wake to full consciousness; not till the twinkle of sun
from the clean bright out-of-doors caught my senses did I realise that I
lay in a great dark place with a glow of dull firelight in the middle.
In time things rose and moved around me, a few ragged shapes of men,
without clothing, shambling with their huge feet and looking towards me
with curved beast-like glances. I tried to marshal my thoughts, and
slowly, bit by bit, I built up the present. There was no question to my
mind of dreaming; the past hours had scored reality upon my brain. Yet I
cannot say that fear was my chief feeling. The first crazy terror had
subsided, and now I felt mainly a sickened disgust with just a tinge of
curiosity. I found that my knife, watch, flask, and money had gone, but
they had left me a map of the countryside. It seemed strange to look at
the calico, with the name of a London printer stamped on the back, and
lines of railway and highroad running through every shire. Decent and
comfortable civilisation! And here was I a prisoner in this den of
nameless folk, and in the midst of a life which history knew not.
Courage is a virtue which grows with reflection and the absence of the
immediate peril. I thought myself into some sort of resolution, and lo!
when the Folk approached me and bound my feet I was back at once in the
most miserable terror. They tied me, all but my hands, with some strong
cord, and carried me to the centre, where the fire was glowing. Their
soft touch was the acutest torture to my nerves, but I stifled my cries
lest some one should lay his hand on my mouth. Had that happened, I am
convinced my reason would have failed me.
So there I lay in the shine of the fire, with the circle of unknown
things around me. There seemed but three or four, but I took no note of
number. They talked huskily among themselves in a tongue which sounded
all gutturals. Slowly my fear became less an emotion than a habit, and I
had room for the smallest shade of curiosity. I strained my ear to catch
a word, but it was a mere chaos of sound. The thing ran and thundered
in my brain as I stared dumbly into the vacant air. Then I thought that
unless I spoke I should certainly go crazy, for my head was beginning to
swim at the strange cooing noise.
I spoke a word or two in my best Gaelic, and they closed round me
inquiringly. Then I was sorry I had spoken, for my words had brought
them nearer, and I shrank at the thought. But as the faint echoes of my
speech hummed in the rock-chamber, I was struck by a curious kinship of
sound. Mine was sharper, more distinct, and staccato; theirs was
blurred, formless, but still with a certain root-resemblance.
Then from the back there came an older being, who seemed to have heard
my words. He was like some foul grey badger, his red eyes sightless, and
his hands trembling on a stump of bog-oak. The others made way for him
with such deference as they were capable of, and the thing squatted down
by me and spoke.
To my amazement his words were familiar. It was some manner of speech
akin to the Gaelic, but broadened, lengthened, coarsened. I remembered
an old book-tongue, commonly supposed posed to be an impure dialect once
used in Brittany, which I had met in the course of my researches. The
words recalled it, and as far as I could remember the thing, I asked him
who he was and where the place might be.
He answered me in the same speech—still more broadened, lengthened,
coarsened. I lay back with sheer amazement. I had found the key to this
unearthly life.
For a little an insatiable curiosity, the ardour of the scholar,
prevailed. I forgot the horror of the place, and thought only of the
fact that here before me was the greatest find that scholarship had ever
made. I was precipitated into the heart of the past. Here must be the
fountainhead of all legends, the chrysalis of all beliefs. I actually
grew lighthearted. This strange folk around me were now no more
shapeless things of terror, but objects of research and experiment. I
almost came to think them not unfriendly.
For an hour I enjoyed the highest of earthly pleasures. In that strange
conversation I heard—in fragments and suggestions—the history of the
craziest survival the world has ever seen. I heard of the struggles with
invaders, preserved as it were in a sort of shapeless poetry. There were
bitter words against the Gaelic oppressor, bitterer words against the
Saxon stranger, and for a moment ancient hatreds flared into life. Then
there came the tale of the hill-refuge, the morbid hideous existence
preserved for centuries amid a changing world. I heard fragments of old
religions, primeval names of god and goddess, half-understood by the
Folk, but to me the key to a hundred puzzles. Tales which survive to us
in broken disjointed riddles were intact here in living form. I lay on
my elbow and questioned feverishly. At any moment they might become
morose and refuse to speak. Clearly it was my duty to make the most of a
brief good fortune.
And then the tale they told me grew more hideous. I heard of the
circumstances of the life itself and their daily shifts for existence.
It was a murderous chronicle—a history of lust and rapine and
unmentionable deeds in the darkness. One thing they had early
recognised—that the race could not be maintained within itself; so that
ghoulish carrying away of little girls from the lowlands began, which I
had heard of but never credited. Shut up in those dismal holes, the
girls soon died, and when the new race had grown up the plunder had been
repeated. Then there were bestial murders in lonely cottages, done for
God knows what purpose. Sometimes the occupant had seen more than was
safe, sometimes the deed was the mere exuberance of a lust of slaying.
As they gabbled their tales my heart's blood froze, and I lay back in
the agonies of fear. If they had used the others thus, what way of
escape was open for myself? I had been brought to this place, and not
murdered on the spot. Clearly there was torture before death in store
for me, and I confess I quailed at the thought.
But none molested me. The elders continued to jabber out their stories,
while I lay tense and deaf. Then to my amazement food was brought and
placed beside me—almost with respect. Clearly my murder was not a thing
of the immediate future. The meal was some form of mutton—perhaps the
shepherd's lost ewes—and a little smoking was all the cooking it had
got. I strove to eat, but the tasteless morsels choked me. Then they set
drink before me in a curious cup, which I seized on eagerly, for my
mouth was dry with thirst. The vessel was of gold, rudely formed, but of
the pure metal, and a coarse design in circles ran round the middle.
This surprised me enough, but a greater wonder awaited me. The liquor
was not water, as I had guessed, but a sort of sweet ale, a miracle of
flavour. The taste was curious, but somehow familiar; it was like no
wine I had ever drunk, and yet I had known that flavour all my life. I
sniffed at the brim, and there rose a faint fragrance of thyme and
heather honey and the sweet things of the moorland. I almost dropped it
in my surprise; for here in this rude place I had stumbled upon that
lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale.
For a second I was entranced with my discovery, and then the wonder of
the cup claimed my attention. Was it a mere relic of pillage, or had
this folk some hidden mine of the precious metal? Gold had once been
common in these hills. There were the traces of mines on Cairnsmore:
shepherds had found it in the gravel of the Gled Water; and the name of
a house at the head of the Clachlands meant the "Home of Gold."
Once more I began my questions, and they answered them willingly. There
and then I heard that secret for which many had died in old time, the
secret of the heather ale. They told of the gold in the hills, of
corries where the sand gleamed and abysses where the rocks were veined.
All this they told me, freely, without a scruple. And then, like a
clap, came the awful thought that this, too, spelled death. These were
secrets which this race aforetime had guarded with their lives; they
told them generously to me because there was no fear of betrayal. I
should go no more out from this place.
The thought put me into a new sweat of terror—not at death, mind you,
but at the unknown horrors which might precede the final suffering. I
lay silent, and after binding my hands they began to leave me and go off
to other parts of the cave. I dozed in the horrible half-swoon of fear,
conscious only of my shaking limbs, and the great dull glow of the fire
in the centre. Then I became calmer. After all, they had treated me with
tolerable kindness: I had spoken their language, which few of their
victims could have done for many a century; it might be that I had found
favour in their eyes. For a little I comforted myself with this
delusion, till I caught sight of a wooden box in a corner. It was of
modern make, one such as grocers use to pack provisions in. It had some
address nailed on it, and an aimless curiosity compelled me to creep
thither and read it. A torn and weather-stained scrap of paper, with the
nails at the corner rusty with age; but something of the address might
still be made out. Amid the stains my feverish eyes read, "To Mr M——,
Carrickfey, by Allerfoot Station."
The ruined cottage in the hollow of the waste with the single gnarled
apple-tree was before me in a twinkling. I remembered the shepherd's
shrinking from the place and the name, and his wild eyes when he told me
of the thing that had happened there. I seemed to see the old man in his
moorland cottage, thinking no evil; the sudden entry of the nameless
things; and then the eyes glazed in unspeakable terror. I felt my lips
dry and burning. Above me was the vault of rock; in the distance I saw
the fire-glow and the shadows of shapes moving around it. My fright was
too great for inaction, so I crept from the couch, and silently,
stealthily, with tottering steps and bursting heart, I began to
reconnoitre.
But I was still bound, my arms tightly, my legs more loosely, but yet
firm enough to hinder flight. I could not get my hands at my leg-straps,
still less could I undo the manacles. I rolled on the floor, seeking
some sharp edge of rock, but all had been worn smooth by the use of
centuries. Then suddenly an idea came upon me like an inspiration. The
sounds from the fire seemed to have ceased, and I could hear them
repeated from another and more distant part of the cave. The Folk had
left their orgy round the blaze, and at the end of the long tunnel I saw
its glow fall unimpeded upon the floor. Once there, I might burn off my
fetters and be free to turn my thoughts to escape.
I crawled a little way with much labour. Then suddenly I came abreast an
opening in the wall, through which a path went. It was a long straight
rock-cutting, and at the end I saw a gleam of pale light. It must be the
open air; the way of escape was prepared for me; and with a prayer I
made what speed I could towards the fire.
I rolled on the verge, but the fuel was peat, and the warm ashes would
not burn the cords. In desperation I went farther, and my clothes began
to singe, while my face ached beyond endurance. But yet I got no nearer
my object. The strips of hide warped and cracked, but did not burn. Then
in a last effort I thrust my wrists bodily into the glow and held them
there. In an instant I drew them out with a groan of pain, scarred and
sore, but to my joy with the band snapped in one place. Weak as I was,
it was now easy to free myself, and then came the untying of my legs.
My hands trembled, my eyes were dazed with hurry, and I was longer over
the job than need have been. But at length I had loosed my cramped knees
and stood on my feet, a free man once more.
I kicked off my boots, and fled noiselessly down the passage to the
tunnel mouth. Apparently it was close on evening, for the white light
had faded to a pale yellow. But it was daylight, and that was all I
sought, and I ran for it as eagerly as ever runner ran to a goal. I came
out on a rock-shelf, beneath which a moraine of boulders fell away in a
chasm to a dark loch. It was all but night, but I could see the gnarled
and fortressed rocks rise in ramparts above, and below the unknown
screes and cliffs which make the side of the Muneraw a place only for
foxes and the fowls of the air.
The first taste of liberty is an intoxication, and assuredly I was mad
when I leaped down among the boulders. Happily at the top of the gully
the stones were large and stable, else the noise would certainly have
discovered me. Down I went, slipping, praying, my charred wrists aching,
and my stockinged feet wet with blood. Soon I was in the jaws of the
cleft, and a pale star rose before me. I have always been timid in the
face of great rocks, and now, had not an awful terror been dogging my
footsteps, no power on earth could have driven me to that descent. Soon
I left the boulders behind, and came to long spouts of little stones,
which moved with me till the hillside seemed sinking under my feet.
Sometimes I was face downwards, once and again I must have fallen for
yards. Had there been a cliff at the foot, I should have gone over it
without resistance; but by the providence of God the spout ended in a
long curve into the heather of the bog.
When I found my feet once more on soft boggy earth, my strength was
renewed within me. A great hope of escape sprang up in my heart. For a
second I looked back. There was a great line of shingle with the cliffs
beyond, and above all the unknown blackness of the cleft. There lay my
terror, and I set off running across the bog for dear life. My mind was
clear enough to know my road. If I held round the loch in front I should
come to a burn which fed the Farawa stream, on whose banks stood the
shepherd's cottage. The loch could not be far; once at the Farawa I
would have the light of the shieling clear before me.
Suddenly I heard behind me, as if coming from the hillside, the patter
of feet. It was the sound which white hares make in the wintertime on a
noiseless frosty day as they patter over the snow. I have heard the same
soft noise from a herd of deer when they changed their pastures. Strange
that so kindly a sound should put the very fear of death in my heart. I
ran madly, blindly, yet thinking shrewdly. The loch was before me.
Somewhere I had read or heard, I do not know where, that the brutish
aboriginal races of the North could not swim. I myself swam powerfully;
could I but cross the loch I should save two miles of a desperate
country.
There was no time to lose, for the patter was coming nearer, and I was
almost at the loch's edge. I tore off my coat and rushed in. The bottom
was mossy, and I had to struggle far before I found any depth. Something
plashed in the water before me, and then something else a little behind.
The thought that I was a mark for unknown missiles made me crazy with
fright, and I struck fiercely out for the other shore. A gleam of
moonlight was on the water at the burn's exit, and thither I guided
myself. I found the thing difficult enough in itself, for my hands
ached, and I was numb from my bonds. But my fancy raised a thousand
phantoms to vex me. Swimming in that black bog water, pursued by those
nameless things, I seemed to be in a world of horror far removed from
the kindly world of men. My strength seemed inexhaustible from my
terror. Monsters at the bottom of the water seemed to bite at my feet,
and the pain of my wrists made me believe that the loch was boiling hot,
and that I was in some hellish place of torment.
I came out on a spit of gravel above the burn mouth, and set off down
the ravine of the burn. It was a strait place, strewn with rocks; but
now and then the hill turf came in stretches, and eased my wounded feet.
Soon the fall became more abrupt, and I was slipping down a hillside,
with the water on my left making great cascades in the granite. And then
I was out in the wider vale where the Farawa water flowed among links of
moss.
Far in front, a speck in the blue darkness, shone the light of the
cottage. I panted forward, my breath coming in gasps and my back shot
with fiery pains. Happily the land was easier for the feet as long as I
kept on the skirts of the bog. My ears were sharp as a wild beast's with
fear, as I listened for the noise of pursuit. Nothing came but the
rustle of the gentlest hill-wind and the chatter of the falling streams.
Then suddenly the light began to waver and move athwart the window. I
knew what it meant. In a minute or two the household at the cottage
would retire to rest, and the lamp would be put out. True, I might find
the place in the dark, for there was a moon of sorts and the road was
not desperate. But somehow in that hour the lamplight gave a promise of
safety which I clung to despairingly.
And then the last straw was added to my misery. Behind me came the pad
of feet, the pat-patter, soft, eerie, incredibly swift. I choked with
fear, and flung myself forward in a last effort. I give my word it was
sheer mechanical shrinking that drove me on. God knows I would have lain
down to die in the heather, had the things behind me been a common
terror of life.
I ran as man never ran before, leaping hags, scrambling through green
well-heads, straining towards the fast-dying light. A quarter of a mile
and the patter sounded nearer. Soon I was not two hundred yards off, and
the noise seemed almost at my elbow. The light went out, and the black
mass of the cottage loomed in the dark.
Then, before I knew, I was at the door, battering it wearily and yelling
for help. I heard steps within and a hand on the bolt. Then something
shot past me with lightning force and buried itself in the wood. The
dreadful hands were almost at my throat, when the door was opened and I
stumbled in, hearing with a gulp of joy the key turn and the bar fall
behind me.
My body and senses slept, for I was utterly tired, but my brain all the
night was on fire with horrid fancies. Again I was in that accursed
cave; I was torturing my hands in the fire; I was slipping barefoot
among jagged boulders; and then with bursting heart I was toiling the
last mile with the cottage light—now grown to a great fire in the
heavens—blazing before me.
It was broad daylight when I awoke, and I thanked God for the
comfortable rays of the sun. I had been laid in a box-bed off the inner
room, and my first sight was the shepherd sitting with folded arms in a
chair regarding me solemnly. I rose and began to dress, feeling my legs
and arms still tremble with weariness. The shepherd's sister bound up my
scarred wrists and put an ointment on my burns; and, limping like an old
man, I went into the kitchen.
I could eat little breakfast, for my throat seemed dry and narrow; but
they gave me some brandy-and-milk, which put strength into my body. All
the time the brother and sister sat in silence, regarding me with covert
glances.
"Ye have been delivered from the jaws o' the Pit," said the man at
length. "See that," and he held out to me a thin shaft of flint. "I fand
that in the door this morning."
I took it, let it drop, and stared vacantly at the window. My nerves had
been too much tried to be roused by any new terror. Out of doors it was
fair weather, flying gleams of April sunlight and the soft colours of
spring. I felt dazed, isolated, cut off from my easy past and pleasing
future, a companion of horrors and the sport of nameless things. Then
suddenly my eye fell on my books heaped on a table, and the old distant
civilisation seemed for the moment inexpressibly dear.
"I must go—at once. And you must come too. You cannot stay here. I tell
you it is death. If you knew what I know you would be crying out with
fear. How far is it to Allermuir? Eight, fifteen miles; and then ten
down Glen Aller to Allerfoot, and then the railway. We must go together
while it is daylight, and perhaps we may be untouched. But quick, there
is not a moment to lose." And I was on my shaky feet, and bustling among
my possessions.
"I'll gang wi' ye to the station," said the shepherd, "for ye're clearly
no fit to look after yourself. My sister will bide and keep the house.
If naething has touched us this ten year, naething will touch us the
day."
"But you cannot stay. You are mad," I began; but he cut me short with
the words, "I trust in God."
"In any case let your sister come with us. I dare not think of a woman
alone in this place."
"I'll bide," said she. "I'm no feared as lang as I'm indoors and there's
steeks on the windies."
So I packed my few belongings as best I could, tumbled my books into a
haversack, and, gripping the shepherd's arm nervously, crossed the
threshold. The glen was full of sunlight. There lay the long shining
links of the Farawa burn, the rough hills tumbled beyond, and far over
all the scarred and distant forehead of the Muneraw. I had always
looked on moorland country as the freshest on earth—clean, wholesome,
and homely. But now the fresh uplands seemed like a horrible pit. When I
looked to the hills my breath choked in my throat, and the feel of soft
heather below my feet set my heart trembling.
It was a slow journey to the inn at Allermuir. For one thing, no power
on earth would draw me within sight of the shieling of Carrickfey, so we
had to cross a shoulder of hill and make our way down a difficult glen,
and then over a treacherous moss. The lochs were now gleaming like
fretted silver; but to me, in my dreadful knowledge, they seemed more
eerie than on that grey day when I came. At last my eyes were cheered by
the sight of a meadow and a fence; then we were on a little byroad; and
soon the fir-woods and corn-lands of Allercleuch were plain before us.
The shepherd came no farther, but with brief good-bye turned his solemn
face hillwards. I hired a trap and a man to drive, and down the ten
miles of Glen Aller I struggled to keep my thoughts from the past. I
thought of the kindly South Country, of Oxford, of anything comfortable
and civilised. My driver pointed out the objects of interest as in duty
bound, but his words fell on unheeding ears. At last he said something
which roused me indeed to interest—the interest of the man who hears
the word he fears most in the world. On the left side of the river there
suddenly sprang into view a long gloomy cleft in the hills, with a vista
of dark mountains behind, down which a stream of considerable size
poured its waters.
"That is the Water o' Dule," said the man in a reverent voice. "A graund
water to fish, but dangerous to life, for it's a' linns. Awa' at the
heid they say there's a terrible wild place called the Scarts o'
Muneraw,—that's a shouther o' the muckle hill itsel' that ye see,—but
I've never been there, and I never kent ony man that had either."
At the station, which is a mile from the village of Allerfoot, I found I
had some hours to wait on my train for the south. I dared not trust
myself for one moment alone, so I hung about the goods-shed, talked
vacantly to the porters, and when one went to the village for tea I
accompanied him, and to his wonder entertained him at the inn. When I
returned I found on the platform a stray bagman who was that evening
going to London. If there is one class of men in the world which I
heartily detest it is this; but such was my state that I hailed him as a
brother, and besought his company. I paid the difference for a
first-class fare, and had him in the carriage with me. He must have
thought me an amiable maniac, for I talked in fits and starts, and when
he fell asleep I would wake him up and beseech him to speak to me. At
wayside stations I would pull down the blinds in case of recognition,
for to my unquiet mind the world seemed full of spies sent by that
terrible Folk of the Hills. When the train crossed a stretch of moor I
would lie down on the seat in case of shafts fired from the heather. And
then at last with utter weariness I fell asleep, and woke screaming
about midnight to find myself well down in the cheerful English
midlands, and red blast-furnaces blinking by the railwayside.
In the morning I breakfasted in my rooms at St Chad's with a dawning
sense of safety. I was in a different and calmer world. The lawn-like
quadrangles, the great trees, the cawing of rooks, and the homely
twitter of sparrows—all seemed decent and settled and pleasing. Indoors
the oak-panelled walls, the shelves of books, the pictures, the faint
fragrance of tobacco, were very different from the gimcrack adornments
and the accursed smell of peat and heather in that deplorable cottage.
It was still vacation-time, so most of my friends were down; but I spent
the day hunting out the few cheerful pedants to whom term and vacation
were the same. It delighted me to hear again their precise talk, to hear
them make a boast of their work, and narrate the childish little
accidents of their life. I yearned for the childish once more; I craved
for women's drawing-rooms, and women's chatter, and everything which
makes life an elegant game. God knows I had had enough of the other
thing for a lifetime!
That night I shut myself in my rooms, barred my windows, drew my
curtains, and made a great destruction. All books or pictures which
recalled to me the moorlands were ruthlessly doomed. Novels, poems,
treatises I flung into an old box, for sale to the second-hand
bookseller. Some prints and water-colour sketches I tore to pieces with
my own hands. I ransacked my fishing-book, and condemned all tackle for
moorland waters to the flames. I wrote a letter to my solicitors,
bidding them go no further in the purchase of a place in Lorn I had long
been thinking of. Then, and not till then, did I feel the bondage of the
past a little loosed from my shoulders. I made myself a night-cap of
rum-punch instead of my usual whisky-toddy, that all associations with
that dismal land might be forgotten, and to complete the renunciation I
returned to cigars and flung my pipe into a drawer.
But when I woke in the morning I found that it is hard to get rid of
memories. My feet were still sore and wounded, and when I felt my arms
cramped and reflected on the causes, there was that black memory always
near to vex me.
In a little term began, and my duties—as deputy-professor of Northern
Antiquities—were once more clamorous. I can well believe that my
hearers found my lectures strange, for instead of dealing with my
favourite subjects and matters, which I might modestly say I had made my
own, I confined myself to recondite and distant themes, treating even
these cursorily and dully. For the truth is, my heart was no more in my
subject. I hated—or I thought that I hated—all things Northern with
the virulence of utter fear. My reading was confined to science of the
most recent kind, to abstruse philosophy, and to foreign classics.
Anything which savoured of romance or mystery was abhorrent; I pined
for sharp outlines and the tangibility of a high civilisation.
All the term I threw myself into the most frivolous life of the place.
My Harrow schooldays seemed to have come back to me. I had once been a
fair cricketer, so I played again for my college, and made decent
scores. I coached an indifferent crew on the river. I fell into the
slang of the place, which I had hitherto detested. My former friends
looked on me askance, as if some freakish changeling had possessed me.
Formerly I had been ready for pedantic discussion, I had been absorbed
in my work, men had spoken of me as a rising scholar. Now I fled the
very mention of things I had once delighted in. The Professor of
Northern Antiquities, a scholar of European reputation, meeting me once
in the Parks, embarked on an account of certain novel rings recently
found in Scotland, and to his horror found that, when he had got well
under weigh, I had slipped off unnoticed. I heard afterwards that the
good old man was found by a friend walking disconsolately with bowed
head in the middle of the High Street. Being rescued from among the
horses' feet, he could only murmur, "I am thinking of Graves, poor man!
And a year ago he was as sane as I am!"
* * * * * * *
But a man may not long deceive himself. I kept up the illusion valiantly
for the term; but I felt instinctively that the fresh schoolboy life,
which seemed to me the extreme opposite to the ghoulish North, and as
such the most desirable of things, was eternally cut off from me. No
cunning affectation could ever dispel my real nature or efface the
memory of a week. I realised miserably that sooner or latter I must
fight it out with my conscience. I began to call myself a coward. The
chief thoughts of my mind began to centre themselves more and more round
that unknown life waiting to be explored among the wilds.
One day I met a friend—an official in the British Museum—who was full
of some new theory about primitive habitations. To me it seemed
inconceivably absurd; but he was strong in his confidence, and without
flaw in his evidence. The man irritated me, and I burned to prove him
wrong, but I could think of no argument which was final against his.
Then it flashed upon me that my own experience held the disproof; and
without more words I left him, hot, angry with myself, and tantalised
by the unattainable.
I might relate my bona-fide experience, but would men believe me? I
must bring proofs, I must complete my researches, so as to make them
incapable of disbelief. And there in those deserts was waiting the key.
There lay the greatest discovery of the century—nay, of the millennium.
There, too, lay the road to wealth such as I had never dreamed of. Could
I succeed, I should be famous for ever. I would revolutionise history
and anthropology; I would systematise folk-lore; I would show the world
of men the pit whence they were digged and the rock whence they were
hewn.
And then began a game of battledore between myself and my conscience.
"You are a coward," said my conscience.
"I am sufficiently brave," I would answer. "I have seen things and yet
lived. The terror is more than mortal, and I cannot face it."
"You are a coward," said my conscience.
"I am not bound to go there again. It would be purely for my own
aggrandisement if I went, and not for any matter of duty."
"Nevertheless you are a coward," said my conscience.
"In any case the matter can wait."
"You are a coward."
* * * * * * *
Then came one awful midsummer night, when I lay sleepless and fought the
thing out with myself. I knew that the strife was hopeless, that I
should have no peace in this world again unless I made the attempt. The
dawn was breaking when I came to the final resolution; and when I rose
and looked at my face in a mirror, lo! it was white and lined and drawn
like a man of sixty.
The next morning I packed a bag with some changes of clothing and a
collection of notebooks, and went up to town. The first thing I did was
to pay a visit to my solicitors. "I am about to travel," said I, "and I
wish to have all things settled in case any accident should happen to
me." So I arranged for the disposal of my property in case of death, and
added a codicil which puzzled the lawyers. If I did not return within
six months, communications were to be entered into with the shepherd at
the shieling of Farawa—post-town Allerfoot. If he could produce any
papers, they were to be put into the hands of certain friends,
published, and the cost charged to my estate. From my solicitors I went
to a gunmaker's in Regent Street and bought an ordinary six-chambered
revolver, feeling much as a man must feel who proposed to cross the
Atlantic in a skiff and purchased a small life-belt as a precaution.
I took the night express to the North, and, for a marvel, I slept. When
I awoke about four we were on the verge of Westmoreland, and stony hills
blocked the horizon. At first I hailed the mountain-land gladly; sleep
for the moment had caused forgetfulness of my terrors. But soon a turn
of the line brought me in full view of a heathery moor, running far to a
confusion of distant peaks. I remembered my mission and my fate, and if
ever condemned criminal felt a more bitter regret I pity his case. Why
should I alone among the millions of this happy isle be singled out as
the repository of a ghastly secret, and be cursed by a conscience which
would not let it rest?
I came to Allerfoot early in the forenoon, and got a trap to drive me up
the valley. It was a lowering grey day, hot and yet sunless. A sort of
heat-haze cloaked the hills, and every now and then a smurr of rain
would meet us on the road, and in a minute be over. I felt wretchedly
dispirited; and when at last the white-washed kirk of Allermuir came
into sight and the broken-backed bridge of Aller, man's eyes seemed to
have looked on no drearier scene since time began.
I ate what meal I could get, for, fears or no, I was voraciously hungry.
Then I asked the landlord to find me some man who would show me the road
to Farawa. I demanded company, not for protection—for what could two
men do against such brutish strength?—but to keep my mind from its own
thoughts.
The man looked at me anxiously.
"Are ye acquaint wi' the folks, then?" he asked.
I said I was, that I had often stayed in the cottage.
"Ye ken that they've a name for being queer. The man never comes here
forbye once or twice a-year, and he has few dealings wi' other herds.
He's got an ill name, too, for losing sheep. I dinna like the country
ava. Up by yon Muneraw—no that I've ever been there, but I've seen it
afar off—is enough to put a man daft for the rest o' his days. What's
taking ye thereaways? It's no the time for the fishing?"
I told him that I was a botanist going to explore certain hill-crevices
for rare ferns. He shook his head, and then after some delay found me an
ostler who would accompany me to the cottage.
The man was a shock-headed, long-limbed fellow, with fierce red hair and
a humorous eye. He talked sociably about his life, answered my hasty
questions with deftness, and beguiled me for the moment out of myself. I
passed the melancholy lochs, and came in sight of the great stony hills
without the trepidation I had expected. Here at my side was one who
found some humour even in those uplands. But one thing I noted which
brought back the old uneasiness. He took the road which led us farthest
from Carrickfey, and when to try him I proposed the other, he vetoed it
with emphasis.
After this his good spirit departed, and he grew distrustful.
"What mak's ye a freend o' the herd at Farawa?" he demanded a dozen
times.
Finally, I asked him if he knew the man, and had seen him lately.
"I dinna ken him, and I hadna seen him for years till a fortnicht syne,
when a' Allermuir saw him. He cam doun one afternoon to the
public-hoose, and begood to drink. He had aye been kenned for a
terrible godly kind o' a man, so ye may believe folk wondered at this.
But when he had stuck to the drink for twae days, and filled himsel'
blind-fou half-a-dozen o' times, he took a fit o' repentance, and raved
and blethered about siccan a life as he led in the muirs. There was some
said he was speakin' serious, but maist thocht it was juist daftness."
"And what did he speak about?" I asked sharply.
"I canna verra weel tell ye. It was about some kind o' bogle that lived
in the Muneraw—that's the shouthers o't ye see yonder—and it seems
that the bogle killed his sheep and frichted himsel'. He was aye
bletherin', too, about something or somebody ca'd Grave; but oh! the man
wasna wise." And my companion shook a contemptuous head.
And then below us in the valley we saw the shieling, with a thin shaft
of smoke rising into the rainy grey weather. The man left me, sturdily
refusing any fee. "I wantit my legs stretched as weel as you. A walk in
the hills is neither here nor there to a stoot man. When will ye be
back, sir?"
The question was well-timed. "To-morrow fortnight," I said, "and I want
somebody from Allermuir to come out here in the morning and carry some
baggage. Will you see to that?"
He said "Ay," and went off, while I scrambled down the hill to the
cottage. Nervousness possessed me, and though it was broad daylight and
the whole place lay plain before me, I ran pell-mell, and did not stop
till I reached the door.
The place was utterly empty. Unmade beds, unwashed dishes, a hearth
strewn with the ashes of peat, and dust thick on everything, proclaimed
the absence of inmates. I began to be horribly frightened. Had the
shepherd and his sister, also, disappeared? Was I left alone in this
bleak place, with a dozen lonely miles between me and human dwellings? I
could not return alone; better this horrible place than the unknown
perils of the out-of-doors. Hastily I barricaded the door, and to the
best of my power shuttered the windows; and then with dreary forebodings
I sat down to wait on fortune.
In a little I heard a long swinging step outside and the sound of dogs.
Joyfully I opened the latch, and there was the shepherd's grim face
waiting stolidly on what might appear.
At the sight of me he stepped back. "What in the Lord's name are ye
daein' here?" he asked. "Didna ye get enough afor?"
"Come in," I said, sharply. "I want to talk."
In he came with those blessed dogs,—what a comfort it was to look on
their great honest faces! He sat down on the untidy bed and waited.
"I came because I could not stay away. I saw too much to give me any
peace elsewhere. I must go back, even though I risk my life for it. The
cause of scholarship demands it as well as the cause of humanity."
"Is that a' the news ye hae?" he said. "Weel, I've mair to tell ye.
Three weeks syne my sister Margit was lost, and I've never seen her
mair."
My jaw fell, and I could only stare at him.
"I cam hame from the hill at nightfa' and she was gone. I lookit for her
up hill and doun, but I couldna find her. Syne I think I went daft. I
went to the Scarts and huntit them up and doun, but no sign could I see.
The Folk can bide quiet enough when they want. Syne I went to Allermuir
and drank mysel' blind,—me, that's a God-fearing man and a saved soul;
but the Lord help me, I didna ken what I was at. That's my news, and day
and night I wander thae hills, seekin' for what I canna find."
"But, man, are you mad?" I cried. "Surely there are neighbours to help
you. There is a law in the land, and you had only to find the nearest
police-office and compel them to assist you."
"What guid can man dae?" he asked. "An army o' sodgers couldna find that
hidy-hole. Forby, when I went into Allermuir wi' my story the folk
thocht me daft. It was that set me drinking, for—the Lord forgive
me!—I wasna my ain maister. I threepit till I was hairse, but the
bodies just lauch'd." And he lay back on the bed like a man mortally
tired.
Grim though the tidings were, I can only say that my chief feeling was
of comfort. Pity for the new tragedy had swallowed up my fear. I had now
a purpose, and a purpose, too, not of curiosity but of mercy.
"I go to-morrow morning to the Muneraw. But first I want to give you
something to do." And I drew roughly a chart of the place on the back of
a letter. "Go into Allermuir to-morrow, and give this paper to the
landlord at the inn. The letter will tell him what to do. He is to raise
at once all the men he can get, and come to the place on the chart
marked with a cross. Tell him life depends on his hurry."
The shepherd nodded. "D'ye ken the Folk are watching for you? They let
me pass without trouble, for they've nae use for me, but I see fine
they're seeking you. Ye'll no gang half a mile the morn afore they grip
ye."
"So much the better," I said. "That will take me quicker to the place I
want to be at."
"And I'm to gang to Allermuir the morn," he repeated, with the air of a
child conning a lesson. "But what if they'll no believe me?"
"They'll believe the letter."
"Maybe," he said, and relapsed into a doze.
I set myself to put that house in order, to rouse the fire, and prepare
some food. It was dismal work; and meantime outside the night darkened,
and a great wind rose, which howled round the walls and lashed the rain
on the windows.
I had not gone twenty yards from the cottage door ere I knew I was
watched. I had left the shepherd still dozing, in the half-conscious
state of a dazed and broken man. All night the wind had wakened me at
intervals, and now in the half-light of morn the weather seemed more
vicious than ever. The wind cut my ears, the whole firmament was full of
the rendings and thunders of the storm. Rain fell in blinding sheets,
the heath was a marsh, and it was the most I could do to struggle
against the hurricane which stopped my breath. And all the while I knew
I was not alone in the desert.
All men know—in imagination or in experience—the sensation of being
spied on. The nerves tingle, the skin grows hot and prickly, and there
is a queer sinking of the heart. Intensify this common feeling a
hundredfold, and you get a tenth part of what I suffered. I am telling a
plain tale, and record bare physical facts. My lips stood out from my
teeth as I heard, or felt, a rustle in the heather, a scraping among
stones. Some subtle magnetic link seemed established between my body and
the mysterious world around. I became sick—acutely sick—with the
ceaseless apprehension.
My fright became so complete that when I turned a corner of rock, or
stepped in deep heather, I seemed to feel a body rub against mine. This
continued all the way up the Farawa water, and then up its feeder to the
little lonely loch. It kept me from looking forward; but it likewise
kept me in such a sweat of fright that I was ready to faint. Then the
motion came upon me to test this fancy of mine. If I was tracked thus
closely, clearly the trackers would bar my way if I turned back. So I
wheeled round and walked a dozen paces down the glen.
Nothing stopped me. I was about to turn again, when something made me
take six more paces. At the fourth something rustled in the heather, and
my neck was gripped as in a vice. I had already made up my mind on what
I would do. I would be perfectly still, I would conquer my fear, and let
them do as they pleased with me so long as they took me to their
dwelling. But at the touch of the hands my resolutions fled. I struggled
and screamed. Then something was clapped on my mouth, speech and
strength went from me, and once more I was back in the maudlin childhood
of terror.
* * * * * * *
In the cave it was always a dusky twilight. I seemed to be lying in the
same place, with the same dull glare of firelight far off, and the same
close stupefying smell. One of the creatures was standing silently at my
side, and I asked him some trivial question. He turned and shambled down
the passage, leaving me alone.
Then he returned with another, and they talked their guttural talk to
me. I scarcely listened till I remembered that in a sense I was here of
my own accord, and on a definite mission. The purport of their speech
seemed to be that, now I had returned, I must beware of a second flight.
Once I had been spared; a second time I should be killed without mercy.
I assented gladly. The Folk then, had some use for me. I felt my errand
prospering.
Then the old creature which I had seen before crept out of some corner
and squatted beside me. He put a claw on my shoulder, a horrible,
corrugated, skeleton thing, hairy to the finger-tips and nailless. He
grinned, too, with toothless gums, and his hideous old voice was like a
file on sandstone.
I asked questions, but he would only grin and jabber, looking now and
then furtively over his shoulder towards the fire.
I coaxed and humoured him, till he launched into a narrative of which I
could make nothing. It seemed a mere string of names, with certain words
repeated at fixed intervals. Then it flashed on me that this might be a
religious incantation. I had discovered remnants of a ritual and a
mythology among them. It was possible that these were sacred days, and
that I had stumbled upon some rude celebration.
I caught a word or two and repeated them. He looked at me curiously.
Then I asked him some leading question, and he replied with clearness.
My guess was right. The midsummer week was the holy season of the year,
when sacrifices were offered to the gods.
The notion of sacrifices disquieted me, and I would fain have asked
further. But the creature would speak no more. He hobbled off, and left
me alone in the rock-chamber to listen to a strange sound which hung
ceaselessly about me. It must be the storm without, like a park of
artillery rattling among the crags. A storm of storms surely, for the
place echoed and hummed, and to my unquiet eye the very rock of the roof
seemed to shake!
Apparently my existence was forgotten, for I lay long before any one
returned. Then it was merely one who brought food, the same strange meal
as before, and left hastily. When I had eaten I rose and stretched
myself. My hands and knees still quivered nervously; but I was strong
and perfectly well in body. The empty, desolate, tomb-like place was
eerie enough to scare any one; but its emptiness was comfort when I
thought of its inmates. Then I wandered down the passage towards the
fire which was burning in loneliness. Where had the Folk gone? I
puzzled over their disappearance.
Suddenly sounds began to break on my ear, coming from some inner chamber
at the end of that in which the fire burned. I could scarcely see for
the smoke; but I began to make my way towards the noise, feeling along
the sides of rock. Then a second gleam of light seemed to rise before
me, and I came to an aperture in the wall which gave entrance to another
room.
This in turn was full of smoke and glow—a murky orange glow, as if from
some strange flame of roots. There were the squat moving figures,
running in wild antics round the fire. I crouched in the entrance,
terrified and yet curious, till I saw something beyond the blaze which
held me dumb. Apart from the others and tied to some stake in the wall
was a woman's figure, and the face was the face of the shepherd's
sister.
My first impulse was flight. I must get away and think,—plan, achieve
some desperate way of escape. I sped back to the silent chamber as if
the gang were at my heels. It was still empty, and I stood helplessly in
the centre, looking at the impassable walls of rock as a wearied beast
may look at the walls of its cage. I bethought me of the way I had
escaped before and rushed thither, only to find it blocked by a huge
contrivance of stone. Yards and yards of solid rock were between me and
the upper air, and yet through it all came the crash and whistle of the
storm. If I were at my wits' end in this inner darkness, there was also
high commotion among the powers of the air in that upper world.
As I stood I heard the soft steps of my tormentors. They seemed to think
I was meditating escape, for they flung themselves on me and bore me to
the ground. I did not struggle, and when they saw me quiet, they
squatted round and began to speak. They told me of the holy season and
its sacrifices. At first I could not follow them; then when I caught
familiar words I found some clue, and they became intelligible. They
spoke of a woman, and I asked, "What woman?" With all frankness they
told me of the custom which prevailed—how every twentieth summer a
woman was sacrificed to some devilish god, and by the hand of one of the
stranger race. I said nothing, but my whitening face must have told them
a tale, though I strove hard to keep my composure. I asked if they had
found the victims. "She is in this place," they said; "and as for the
man, thou art he." And with this they left me.
I had still some hours; so much I gathered from their talk, for the
sacrifice was at sunset. Escape was cut off for ever. I have always been
something of a fatalist, and at the prospect of the irrevocable end my
cheerfulness returned. I had my pistol, for they had taken nothing from
me. I took out the little weapon and fingered it lovingly. Hope of the
lost, refuge of the vanquished, ease to the coward,—blessed be he who
first conceived it!
The time dragged on, the minutes grew to hours, and still I was left
solitary. Only the mad violence of the storm broke the quiet. It had
increased in fury, for the stones at the mouth of the exit by which I
had formerly escaped seemed to rock with some external pressure, and
cutting shafts of wind slipped past and cleft the heat of the passage.
What a sight the ravine outside must be, I thought, set in the forehead
of a great hill, and swept clean by every breeze! Then came a crashing,
and the long hollow echo of a fall. The rocks are splitting, said I; the
road down the corrie will be impassable now and for evermore.
I began to grow weak with the nervousness of the waiting, and by-and-by
I lay down and fell into a sort of doze. When I next knew consciousness
I was being roused by two of the Folk, and bidden get ready. I stumbled
to my feet, felt for the pistol in the hollow of my sleeve, and prepared
to follow.
When we came out into the wider chamber the noise of the storm was
deafening. The roof rang like a shield which has been struck. I noticed,
perturbed as I was, that my guards cast anxious eyes around them,
alarmed, like myself, at the murderous din. Nor was the world quieter
when we entered the last chamber, where the fire burned and the remnant
of the Folk waited. Wind had found an entrance from somewhere or other,
and the flames blew here and there, and the smoke gyrated in odd
circles. At the back, and apart from the rest, I saw the dazed eyes and
the white old drawn face of the woman.
They led me up beside her to a place where there was a rude flat stone,
hollowed in the centre, and on it a rusty iron knife, which seemed once
to have formed part of a scythe-blade. Then I saw the ceremonial which
was marked out for me. It was the very rite which I had dimly figured as
current among a rude people, and even in that moment of horror I had
something of the scholar's satisfaction.
The oldest of the Folk, who seemed to be a sort of priest, came to my
side and mumbled a form of words. His fetid breath sickened me; his dull
eyes, glassy like a brute's with age, brought my knees together. He put
the knife in my hands, dragged the terror-stricken woman forward to the
altar, and bade me begin.
I began by sawing her bonds through. When she felt herself free she
would have fled back, but stopped when I bade her. At that moment there
came a noise of rending and crashing as if the hills were falling, and
for one second the eyes of the Folk were averted from the frustrated
sacrifice.
Only for a moment. The next they saw what I had done, and with one
impulse rushed towards me. Then began the last scene in the play. I sent
a bullet through the right eye of the first thing that came on. The
second shot went wide; but the third shattered the hand of an elderly
ruffian with a club. Never for an instant did they stop, and now they
were clutching at me. I pushed the woman behind, and fired three rapid
shots in blind panic, and then, clutching the scythe, I struck right and
left like a madman.
Suddenly I saw the foreground sink before my eyes. The roof sloped down,
and with a sickening hiss a mountain of rock and earth seemed to
precipitate itself on the foremost of my assailants. One, nipped in the
middle by a rock, caught my eye by his hideous writhings. Two only
remained in what was now a little suffocating chamber, with embers from
the fire still smoking on the floor.
The woman caught me by the hand and drew me with her, while the two
seemed mute with fear. "There's a road at the back," she screamed. "I
ken it. I fand it out." And she pulled me up a narrow hole in the rock.
* * * * * * *
How long we climbed I do not know. We were both fighting for air, with
the tightness of throat and chest, and the craziness of limb which mean
suffocation. I cannot tell when we first came to the surface, but I
remember the woman, who seemed to have the strength of extreme terror,
pulling me from the edge of a crevasse and laying me on a flat rock. It
seemed to be the depth of winter, with sheer-falling rain and a wind
that shook the hills.
Then I was once more myself and could look about me. From my feet yawned
a sheer abyss, where once had been a hill-shoulder. Some great mass of
rock on the brow of the mountain had been loosened by the storm, and in
its fall had caught the lips of the ravine and blocked the upper outlet
from the nest of dwellings. For a moment, I feared that all had been
destroyed.
My feeling—Heaven help me!—was not thankfulness for God's mercy and my
escape, but a bitter mad regret. I rushed frantically to the edge, and
when I saw only the blackness of darkness I wept weak tears. All the
time the storm was tearing at my body, and I had to grip hard by hand
and foot to keep my place.
Suddenly on the brink of the ravine I saw a third figure. We two were
not the only fugitives. One of the Folk had escaped.
I ran to it, and to my surprise the thing as soon as it saw me rushed to
meet me. At first I thought it was with some instinct of
self-preservation, but when I saw its eyes I knew the purpose of fight.
Clearly one or other should go no more from the place.
We were some ten yards from the brink when I grappled with it. Dimly I
heard the woman scream with fright, and saw her scramble across the
hillside. Then we were tugging in a death-throe, the hideous smell of
the thing in my face, its red eyes burning into mine, and its hoarse
voice muttering. Its strength seemed incredible; but I, too, am no
weakling. We tugged and strained, its nails biting into my flesh, while
I choked its throat unsparingly. Every second I dreaded lest we should
plunge together over the ledge, for it was thither my adversary tried to
draw me. I caught my heel in a nick of rock, and pulled madly against
it.
And then, while I was beginning to glory with the pride of conquest, my
hope was dashed in pieces. The thing seemed to break from my arms, and,
as if in despair, cast itself headlong into the impenetrable darkness. I
stumbled blindly after it, saved myself on the brink, and fell back,
sick and ill, into a merciful swoon.
* * * * * * *
At this point the narrative of my unfortunate friend, Mr Graves of St
Chad's, breaks off abruptly. He wrote it shortly before his death, and
was prevented from completing it by the attack of heart failure which
carried him off. In accordance with the instructions in his will, I have
prepared it for publication, and now in much fear and hesitation, give
it to the world. First, however, I must supplement it by such facts as
fall within my knowledge.
The shepherd seems to have gone to Allermuir and by the help of the
letter convinced the inhabitants. A body of men was collected under the
landlord, and during the afternoon set out for the hills. But
unfortunately the great midsummer storm—the most terrible of recent
climatic disturbances—had filled the mosses and streams, and they found
themselves unable to proceed by any direct road. Ultimately late in the
evening they arrived at the cottage of Farawa, only to find there a
raving woman, the shepherd's sister, who seemed crazy with brain-fever.
She told some rambling story about her escape, but her narrative said
nothing of Mr Graves. So they treated her with what skill they
possessed, and sheltered for the night in and around the cottage. The
next morning the storm had abated a little, and the woman had recovered
something of her wits. From her they learned that Mr Graves was lying in
a ravine on the side of the Muneraw in imminent danger of his life. A
body set out to find him; but so immense was the landslip, and so
dangerous the whole mountain, that it was nearly evening when they
recovered him from the ledge of rock. He was alive, but unconscious, and
on bringing him back to the cottage it was clear that he was, indeed,
very ill. There he lay for three months, while the best skill that could
be got was procured for him. By dint of an uncommon toughness of
constitution he survived; but it was an old and feeble man who returned
to Oxford in the early winter.
The shepherd and his sister immediately left the countryside, and were
never more heard of, unless they are the pair of unfortunates who are at
present in a Scottish pauper asylum, incapable of remembering even their
names. The people who last spoke with them declared that their minds
seemed weakened by a great shock, and that it was hopeless to try to get
any connected or rational statement.
The career of my poor friend from that hour was little short of a
tragedy. He awoke from his illness to find the world incredulous; even
the country-folk of Allermuir set down the story to the shepherd's
craziness and my friend's credulity. In Oxford, his argument was
received with polite scorn. An account of his experiences which he drew
up for the 'Times' was refused by the editor; and an article on
"Primitive Peoples of the North," embodying what he believed to be the
result of his discoveries, was unanimously rejected by every responsible
journal in Europe. At first, he bore the treatment bravely. Reflection
convinced him that the colony had not been destroyed. Proofs were still
awaiting his hand, and with courage and caution he might yet triumph
over his enemies. But unfortunately, though the ardour of the scholar
burned more fiercely than ever and all fear seemed to have been purged
from his soul, the last adventure had grievously sapped his bodily
strength. In the spring following his accident he made an effort to
reach the spot—alone, for no one could be persuaded to follow him in
what was regarded as a childish madness. He slept at the now deserted
cottage of Farawa, but in the morning found himself unable to continue,
and with difficulty struggled back to the shepherd's cottage at
Allercleuch, where he was confined to bed for a fortnight. Then it
became necessary for him to seek health abroad, and it was not till the
following autumn that he attempted the journey again. He fell sick a
second time at the inn of Allermuir, and during his convalescence had
himself carried to a knoll in the inn garden, whence a glimpse can be
obtained of the shoulder of the Muneraw. There he would sit for hours
with his eyes fixed on the horizon, and at times he would be found
weeping with weakness and vexation. The last attempt was made but two
months before his last illness. On this occasion he got no farther than
Carlisle, where he was taken ill with what proved to be a premonition of
death. After that he shut his lips tightly, as though recognising the
futility of his hopes. Whether he had been soured by the treatment he
received, or whether his brain had already been weakened, he had become
a morose silent man, and for the two years before his death had few
friends and no society. From the obituary notice in the 'Times' I take
the following paragraph, which shows in what light the world had come to
look upon him:—
"At the outset of his career he was regarded as a rising scholar in one
department of archæology, and his Taffert lectures were a real
contribution to an obscure subject. But in afterlife he was led into
fantastic speculations; and when he found himself unable to convince his
colleagues, he gradually retired into himself, and lived practically a
hermit's life till his death. His career, thus broken short, is a sad
instance of the fascination which the recondite and the quack can
exercise even over men of approved ability."
And now his own narrative is published, and the world can judge as it
pleases about the amazing romance. The view which will doubtless find
general acceptance is that the whole is a figment of the brain, begotten
of some harmless moorland adventure and the company of such religious
maniacs as the shepherd and his sister. But some who knew the former
sobriety and calmness of my friend's mind may be disposed timorously and
with deep hesitation to another verdict. They may accept the narrative,
and believe that somewhere in those moorlands he met with a horrible
primitive survival, passed through the strangest adventure, and had his
fingers on an epoch-making discovery. In this case they will be inclined
to sympathise with the loneliness and misunderstanding of his latter
days. It is not for me to decide the question. Though a
fellow-historian, the Picts are outside my period, and I dare not
advance an opinion on a matter with which I am not fully familiar. But I
would point out that the means of settling the question are still
extant, and I would call upon some young archæologist, with a reputation
to make, to seize upon the chance of the century. Most of the expresses
for the North stop at Allerfoot; a ten-miles' drive will bring him to
Allermuir; and then with a fifteen-miles' walk he is at Farawa and on
the threshold of discovery. Let him follow the burn and cross the ridge
and ascend the Scarts of the Muneraw, and, if he return at all, it may
be with a more charitable judgment of my unfortunate friend.
