Quick as lightning, he whips round again, betraying his alarm by breaking the water. Leaving the stream some thirty yards above he makes his way aslant the furzy croft to outflank the flickering flame, but oh, horror! again a terrifying light is there behind a thick bush awaiting him. He retreats in earnest this time. Ignominious conduct, it cannot be gainsaid, for a creature with the jaws of a bull-dog, for a creature heedless of the fiercest lightnings or of the phosphorescent glow of the waves, and tolerant of the glare of the midsummer sun when basking on the rocks at the foot of the towering cliffs. He is not, however, at the end of his resources. Stay at the lake he will not, and why should he? There are other avenues of escape. In the next valley there is a stone drain, very safe, though close to a lonely homestead, and he may possibly reach it before dawn. He knows too well that there is no time to lose, so leaving the lake he hurries up the hill and gains the crest of the cairn without mishap. Now why, when every moment is precious, does he dwell in that clump of bracken near the Giant’s Cradle? and at what object can he be peering so intently through the fronds? Does a lantern’s light confront him? or is it, perhaps, the flame of a candle shining from the keeper’s window in the clearing amidst the pines?

It is no paltry glimmer behind a pane of glass, that holds him there. Afar off, in the cleft between two dark hills, lines of vermilion streak the amber East.

Full well the otter knows these harbingers of the sun that will expose him to the eye of man, whose voice he dreads, whose footfall he shrinks from, whose smell taints the air and chills the blood. He turns his lissom head and looks back at the valley of terror. The deep-cut bottom lies in gloom. Banks, creeks, island and marsh invite him to their dusky shelter. He can discern tree, bush, reed-bed and the sinuous outline of the placid lake, as he shifts his gaze from blot to blot of darkest umbrage. Differences of shade there are, but not a vestige of colour, save on the dome of a giant pine, the hue of which awakes as he gazes. Instantly the faint green flush catches his eye, and to the East he turns his mask again: “umph!” the rim of the sun shows in the trough of the hills: it is day. Even then he dreads to return to the lake; after all it is early for man to be stirring and he may reach the drain unseen. Skirting the plantation he slinks along lanes in the boulder-strewn gorse, gains the edge of the waste land, and looks over. A cow is grazing in the rough pasture that runs up to it. He can smell her sweet breath, but he does not fear her. He is about to jump from the wall down on the grass and creep along a ditch leading to the drain. “Shep boay.” It is the shout of the crofter he hears, and then the dog comes through the open gate and runs up the hill towards the spot where he is crouching. The cow takes little notice of the noisy lurcher, but the otter steals back along his own tracks towards the cairn.

The garish hues of furze bloom, lichen and pine stem, the dewdrops that jewel every blade, disconcert the belated wildling of the night, as with reluctant steps he steals towards the lake whose shelter instinct has warned him to shun. It is true that he knows its wild surroundings well, its hollow banks, its reedy hovers; and this knowledge brings him such solace as familiar fastnesses bring an outlaw expecting hue and cry after him. How he wishes, as he decides where to lie up, that the valley contained one impregnable stronghold, a network of forgotten drains, a clitter of rocks, a labyrinth of half-flooded mine-workings. He has reached the foot of the hill, and is stealing like a shadow down the strand of a little bay athwart which lies a fallen tree. Look! he is scrambling over the trunk: now he has dived. You will not see him again, watch you ever so intently. Without once coming up to vent he has crossed the lake some sixty yards in width and entered, by a submerged hole in the trunk, the hollow willow on the bank opposite. It is night in there save for the ray which shoots through a crevice of his sanctuary, and glows and fades at the will of the trembling leaves outside. The valley is awakening. The sunbeams that slant over the lichened cairn now bright as with outcropping gold, bathe stem, leaf and petal, and dance on the rippled surface of the lake. Hushed, indeed, are the weird voices of night; but from spinney and brake come the songs of finch and warbler, moor-hens call amongst the reeds, doves coo in the pines, and a robin sings on a branch of the willow. Even the midges, inspired by the joy that moves all creatures at the return of brightsome day, have resumed their gambols around the gladdening ray up in the turret of the otter’s lair. Why, look! the old vixen, who had been puzzled at the midnight tooting, lies blinking at the mouth of her earth under the gnarled pine on the sunny slope above; but fear possesses the otter as it never did before. Five years ago—he was a cub then—the footfall of a coastguard on the cliff above awoke in him the sense of fear, and from that night he had never been able to throw off the dread of man that haunted him, that made him steal abroad at dusk and lie hidden by day. Yet man had never injured him—it was in a life-and-death struggle with a huge conger that he lost his claw—as far as he knew, man had never seen him. But fear was his heritage as it was the price of his freedom. As he lies curled up against the sloping trunk of the willow he gets a glimmering of what had been a mystery to him—how it was that some of his tribe had disappeared from their haunts, and why he had failed to find the skittish little otter with whom he had mated, though he had sought her everywhere around the coast and along the streams. A vague apprehension of impending danger kept him awake, and before the sun was high in the heaven he knew all.

The Earthstopper, having snatched a little sleep in his arm-chair, has returned to the lake to await the hounds. There he is, sitting on the fallen tree over which the otter passed three hours ago. Its footprints are marked on the sand between the lines of drift that tell of dwindling springs on the moorland, and of the winds that ruffled the sinking lake. In shape, the three acres of water resemble the shadow of a hand with outstretched fingers. The rhododendrons cover the triangle of ground between the narrow channel of the inflow and the creek next it; the fingers of stagnant water are fringed with reeds. The old man is wondering where the otter, if it has not returned to the cliffs, may be lying up. His eyes wander to the likely places; to the island, to the hollow banks, to the clump of bushes, to the reed-bed over which a mist hangs, half veiling the blush of morning on the stems of the pines beyond. He does not waste a glance on the bare bank opposite, or its solitary willow whose tender green foliage stands out against the sombre hillside. Turning his head he sees the hounds coming down the hill below the cairn. They are not very wide of the line taken by the otter at dawn. Only a small field is out. With Sir Bevil, who carries the horn, are the parson, the doctor, and half a dozen others, keen sportsmen all of them. Following in their wake are old Sir Lopes and Nute the huntsman. Let me introduce the pack to you. Those rough-haired hounds are Taffy and Gellert; the foxhounds are Troubadour, Merlin, Cunoval, Vivien, Dawnsman, Padzepaw, Sweetlips, Jollyboy, Bucca, and Dozmary. Better hounds never drew for an otter; but the terriers are the wonder of this little pack. The one running alongside Dozmary is Vixen, who never finds a drain too long or too wet. What battles she has fought underground, her scarred head testifies. Then there is Venom. She is in her usual place at Sir Bevil’s heels. A treasure she is, for she can dive and enter the submerged mouth of a drain, and many an otter has she thus dislodged from its holt.

“Well, Andrew,” said Sir Bevil, “did the otter come up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you manage to keep him up?” This with a smile, for he too had heard the midnight tooting. “I hope so, but there’s no knowin’, he’s bin heere,” said he, pointing to the tracks on the sand.

At that moment Jollyboy hits the line of the otter, throws his tongue and, jumping the fallen tree, takes to the water. The rest of the pack follows, Sir Bevil cheering them on. Swimming close to the bank, they make for the head of the lake, the valley resounding with their music as they pick up the scent left by the otter in his night’s fishing. They are a pretty sight as they skirt the wall of pale green reeds fringing the nearest creek and leave the water to enter the yielding cover. Evidently the varmint has not been there, for excepting the sing-song voices of the Welsh hounds, the pack is silent. Leaving the reed-bed they cross the furthest creek and are lost to sight under the dense rhododendron bushes. From there the few otters found at the lake have been “put down,” and the field is on the tiptoe of expectation. But expectations are seldom realised in otter-hunting. Not a sound comes from the dark green thicket except the cheery voice of Sir Bevil, for even Taffy and Gelert throw their babbling tongues no longer. Andrew’s heart sinks within him as the hounds issue from the tenantless bushes and make across the inflow towards the opposite strand. But why dwell on his disappointment, now that the united pack—for Troubadour and Jollyboy have swum over from the island and joined the others—are only a good stone’s throw from the willow? To all appearance, they might nearly as well expect to find an otter on an open beach. True, there are a few bits of hollow bank, but the eye can safely pronounce them blank at a glance, and as for the tree, it looks as solid as an oak. “Terribly slow this,” says one of the field to his neighbour; may be it is so for him; but it is an anxious moment for the listening varmint, whose forepaws, the water, disturbed by the approaching pack, is beginning to lap. He is not kept long in suspense. Dawnsman’s bell-like note proclaims the find, and the next moment the frantic pack is baying round the willow. Unable to get at the quarry, the hounds swarm round the half-submerged trunk, pawing the bark in their helplessness; but the otter does not budge. It is not fear that holds him there. He is bristling with rage and ready to do battle for his life, but only by compulsion will he leave his sanctuary. Not one of the field is up to thunder at his walls with an otter-pole; but Venom, ever at hand, dives and at last finds the entrance, more than a foot below the surface. The otter sees the head of the terrier as it fills the hole, sees it rising through the dark water. “Yap, yap,” followed by a short, sharp scuffle; and the next moment the parson, who has hurried to the spot, views the chain of bubbles which betrays the escape of the game. A loud hew-gaze—what lungs the parson must have!—sends a thrill through the field, who have already posted themselves at different points around the lake. Not an eye is turned on the hounds, now following the game, not an ear heeds their music; no, every one, even old Nute himself, who loves the hounds and has come out to see them work, is watching the rippled surface ahead to get a view of the wily varmint when he vents. As if disdaining the shelter of the banks, the otter comes up in mid-lake and floats there like a log, the water flush with his long back and his beadlike eyes gleaming in the morning light. “A grand beast,” says the doctor without taking his eyes off it. Yes, he is in the full pride of his great strength and without the help of the field; the pack, good as it is, would never tire him out. His back is towards the clamorous hounds, and surely they will seize him; but no, just as Dawnsman draws near, he dives, leaving a swirl behind him. When he comes up again he is not thirty yards from the fall. It were tedious to relate every detail of the hunt which went on for the next four hours, during which the hounds, aided by the hew-gazes of the field, never give the quarry any rest. At the end of that time the otter, somewhat exhausted by repeated dives, which have been getting shorter and shorter, lands on the island. Little respite does he get, for Padzepaw and Jollyboy, finding him there, make him take to the water again, but at the expense of frightful wounds. Then it is that Andrew gets a good view of the creature as he seeks the shallows and swims close to the sandy bottom. With his forepaws lying against his body he is propelling himself with his hind feet. His movements are too rapid for the Earthstopper to see this, and like a fleeting shadow the graceful creature is lost in the dark water. It next lands on the muddy margin of the near creek and rests on a mass of drift lying there. Old Nute is looking down at the fine beast over the reeds. The pack is nearly on him before he dives, but by swimming down the lake and doubling he succeeds in throwing off the hounds and gaining the shelter of the rhododendrons unobserved. A few minutes’ breathing-space only does he get before Merlin, Dozmary and Vivien discover his whereabouts. Smarting from their wounds, for all three of them have been gripped by the otter and taken to the bottom of the lake, they hesitate to attack the infuriated beast as he crouches there, grinning and showing his blood-stained teeth. Not so Vixen; the moment she arrives she flies at him and, the hounds closing in at the same time, a terrible conflict ensues. Badly mauled though he is, the formidable beast fights his way through his foes, gains the water and dives with Vixen fastened to him. The terrier comes up after a time, but the otter disappears as if by magic. Baffled of their quarry, the maddened hounds draw nearly every hover, except the insignificant one near the willow where the otter is resting with just his nostrils out of water. Old Sir Lopes sees him there; but he keeps the secret, though with some misgiving, to himself. Forty years ago he would have shouted himself hoarse; but somehow he cannot give the hunted beast away this morning. Knowing how it must end if he keeps to the lake, the otter resolves to try and steal away across country to the Newlyn stream. It is a desperate way out of the straits he is in, for it will probably mean death in the open; but there is just the chance that he may reach the safe drain below Buryas Bridge if he can only slip away unnoticed. But how is this possible? The space between him and the gulley that seams the steep rise by the ice-house is covered with turf that rabbits have nibbled close. Uninviting avenue of escape this under the very eye of the parson now posted near the willow, and with Merlin and Dawnsman swimming at last towards the spot where he rests, his eyes watching the hounds’ white legs through the clouded water. Yet at this critical moment, when renewed hue and cry seem imminent, fortune favours the hunted creature. A tally-ho—by whom given Andrew was never able to find out—comes distinct and thrilling from the reed-bed at the head of the remotest creek, and draws away most of the field and all the hounds. The tremor of the bank caused by the hurrying feet at first fills the otter with fresh alarm, but in the quiet that succeeds he raises his head and listens.

“Wind him, my boys.” It is the Squire’s voice he can hear in the distance. Thinking the moment propitious he steals from the water, dashes across the sward, and presses up the gulley at the top of his speed. His immediate point is a hover beneath a big rock below Skimiel’s Bridge. The stream swirls round it, but a dry holt within is known to all the wandering tribe of otters. Only by a miracle can the slow-footed creature cover the two miles to it, before he is overtaken. Look at him as he hurries along under the shelter of that stone wall, as he threads his way among the furze bushes, as he glides like a monster eel through the coarse grasses, where the dew lies heavy. You are conscious of the great effort he is making to save his life. That dark spot below the high bank is the rock he is making for, and it is the silver thread of the stream surrounding it that you see sparkling here and there at the foot of the rugged slope. Till now he has taken nearly a bee-line, but will he dare to pass before the door of the farmhouse he is heading for, where an old woman is feeding the geese and a black pig blocks the narrow way. Do not wonder that this shyest of creatures recked not of the shaking of the old woman’s apron, that he paid no heed to the pig which ran him neck and neck for twenty yards before going off at a tangent. With the lake now more than a mile behind, a posse of constables should not make him deviate from his line. But hark! Faint though the cry be, the otter hears it. Full well he knows that his escape has been discovered, that at every stride the hounds are gaining, and that there is no twist or turn on his hot trail to check them; but he cannot add to his best pace. Look, he has left the furze and bracken that hid his movements and is about to enter the reedy swamp which separates him from the stream. On landing he does not, like the fox, dwell to listen. No, some twenty yards below the rock he dives, nor does he come to the surface until he has gained its shelter. To his dismay he finds an otter in possession, one with whom he has mated. The cubs, awakened out of their sleep, hiss at the hunted creature as his head shows above the gurgling water. Only for an instant does he stay to lick the bitch’s face with his hot tongue, then, after swimming down stream for some distance he lands and, reckless for the moment of his own safety, runs along the open bank in full view of the miller from Nancothan, who has tottered up the valley to raise the flushet of the mill stream. See! the old man is waving his white hat to attract the approaching hounds: he is shouting too at the top of his feeble voice; but the gallant beast keeps to the open bank, and not until he is past the shallows where the moorland cattle stand on sweltering days does he dive, fleeing like a shadow below the surface, more determined than ever to gain the safe drain he set out to reach. On reaching the stream most of the hounds take to the water, and just as Venom is getting dangerously near the rock Cunoval hits the downward line. Rallying to his cry, the pack flash along the bank and rapidly lessen the distance separating them from their distressed quarry.

Seeing the direction they are taking, the field, by a short cut, come up with them by the mill, where they have met with a check. Across the chord of a bend the hounds recover the line, and taking to the bed of the stream pass under Nancothan Bridge. The otter hears them coming, but another check gives him a slight advantage, and surely now he will reach the drain. Vain hope! Between him and his objective, in the narrow passage between two rocks that contract the stream, stands the Earthstopper. On finding that the otter had stolen away from the lake he guessed it would make for the sea, and has hurried across country to intercept it. Breathless after his long run, he has hardly taken up his position before he sees the otter coming towards him, breaking the water in its frantic hurry. Bang up against his legs it comes, and as it retreats up stream, the excited hounds come round the bend and swim over it. Nearly exhausted by its efforts, the beast takes shelter under a bank facing its old path to the lake, and when Sir Bevil has rushed past, it dives, crosses the stream, glides between the flags, and following the track it knows so well, presses up the hill as best it can towards the plantation where the Earthstopper had found its tracks.

“Se—seen the otter, Andrew?” gasps Sir Bevil.

“Yes, sir, he’s gone up strame, he’s touchin’.”

The horn recalls the reluctant hounds, revelling in the scent that the stream carries down. There they come past the Earthstopper. See how eagerly they are drawing the banks, how impatient the check makes them. Gellert, who has the best nose of the pack, is getting close to the clump of iris; the next moment his tell-tale tongue warns the pack that he has discovered the line of the quarry, and with triumphant clamour they breast the hillside on its hot trail. The game varmint has nearly gained the crest, but he can scarcely hope to reach the adjacent valley. He seems to be standing still, in comparison with the hounds, which, with hackles up, are now racing for his blood. He is not half-way down the plantation when they stream over the wall that bounds it. Troubadour, ever to the fore, gets a view of the beaten creature struggling on; but above the ominous whimpers of the pack the otter hears the roar of the fall, and this braces him to a final effort. Troubadour is all but on him as he springs from the high bank, and the next instant the spray flies from the pool as otter and hound strike the water.

Without showing himself the hunted beast seeks refuge behind the roots of the big elm which, a week before, had attracted the eye of the Earthstopper. The otter is in sore plight, but little does he fear the infuriated pack now. They may bay outside his stronghold to their heart’s content. But he’s not done with yet. Venom and Vixen have just disappeared between the coils of the roots and are making for a ledge within, where the creature is resting and breathing heavily. Then Sir Bevil, the parson, the doctor, and the Earthstopper come rushing down between the trees. The next moment Andrew is lying at full length and listening. With his ear close to the ground, he can hear the terriers yapping six or eight feet below.

“They caan’t get at un, sir,” says he, rising to his feet after a time, his voice scarcely audible above the clamour of the hounds and the roar of the fall.

“Then we’ll leave him, we won’t dig. He’s a grand beast and deserves his life. You look disappointed, Andrew?”

“No, sir, should only a’ liked to a’ seed the pad of un.”

With some difficulty the hounds are called off and the terriers induced to come out. The otter lived some years after, but Andrew never spurred him again.

It is with some misgiving that I venture to insert this tale, inasmuch as the telling involves mention of a place so weird that readers strange to the Land’s End district may be incredulous of its existence.

For to this day an evil repute clings to Cairn Kenidzhek amongst those best fit to judge its character—to wit, the few dwellers round the base of the rugged hill on which it frowns. Within half a mile or so of it, there are three small farmhouses, counting the one on the lower moor by the quaking bog where Jim Trevaskis used to live, and from the occupants, if you first win their confidence and are betrayed by no “furrin” accent, you may learn some of the strange occurrences that take place about it.

With bated breath they will tell you that on pitch-dark nights the pile of rocks is at times lit up with an unearthly light, and that now and then, especially when trouble is brooding and the death-watch has been ticking in the “spence,” they hear, as they lie awake, the stony hill ring under the stroke of galloping hoofs. Whether these and other eerie happenings, around which legends have shaped themselves, can be explained on scientific grounds, matters not to them, for the Celt of the countryside turns a deaf ear to new-fangled notions and clings to the traditions of his fathers. But of all the haunting memories of the Cairn, that which inspires the greatest dread is associated with the disappearance of two men who were last seen toiling up the hill at the close of a wild winter’s day. No legend is this coming down from a remote past; for Dick Shellal, Trevaskis’ farmhand, who could count up to forty with the help of his fingers, had heard his great-grandfather say that the mystery was talked about when he was a boy as if it were a thing of yesterday.

On the December night when our tale opens, Trevaskis himself, as was his wont in stormy weather, bedded up the cattle early, piled the furze on the fire though the wind was westerly, and—a thing he would never have done by day—permitted Shellal, who scamped the job in his hurry to get indoors, to put the wheel of an old donkey cart on the “riffled” thatch of the pig’s “crow.” Hours later, when his master had at length fallen asleep, and Shellal could hear him snoring through the “planchen,” he himself lay wide awake on his straw pallet listening to the moaning of the wind, and, tempted during a temporary lull to gratify his curiosity and see whether anything was abroad, sat up in bed and peeped through the corner pane of the attic window. Angry clouds coursed across the face of the moon, and the sky was nearly as dark as the earth; but whilst he looked there was a rift in the black veil, and against the silver disc he got a glimpse of the jagged crest of the Cairn. Lowering his gaze at the sight of it, he followed the vague outline of the murky cone of the hill, and then with the quickness of thought, buried his shock head under the bedclothes. Coward! Let him lie there with chattering teeth, and with knees doubled up to his chin. The light that scared him, though it is so near the edge of the bog, is no pixie’s light, no lantern held by shadowy hands; the feeble rays he saw, flicker on the path of as human a being as ever trod the earth. He should have known who it was, for there is but one man whose lonesome duty could bring him there in the small hours of the morning, when the watch-dog sleeps, and the fox is tyrant of the farmyard. Yes, it is Andrew who threads his way in and out amongst the rush-clumps near the lip of the treacherous quagmire. But what is he doing there? Why has he not taken to the rising ground at his usual point, a furlong back, where the herbage is scant, and scarce hides the stony surface? Surely he must have missed his way, or he would not be following the widely circuitous base to reach the fox-earth in the valley on the far side of the Cairn.

It is not so. No, given to taking short cuts though he is, he prefers on this night to keep on the rim of the haunted slopes, and as near the bog as foothold will allow. Level-headed as he is in most things, the taint of superstition is in his blood too, and it is fear, excited by the story he heard two hours ago, that dictates the path he follows. Dropping in at the “Jolly Tinners” at Trewellard for a glass of beer before starting on his round, he found himself an involuntary listener to what he would rather have missed. On pushing open the door, he was surprised to find some half a dozen miners in the bar, and wondered at the cause of their silence. They were seated on a form in front of a fire, but their attention was apparently taken by an aged miner, for their heads were turned his way. Andrew, who feared there had been loss of life in the mine, stole into a seat opposite the old man, who, to his dismay, related the story of the two men lost upon Cairn Kenidjack, for so he called it. Thrilling was every word he said, even when dealing with the well-known facts—the sighting of the strange sail, the landing at the Cove, the path taken by the men across the moor, their conversation with the miners near the Cross, the spot near the Cairn where they were last seen in the gathering gloom, the lurid light that lit up the rocks, the finding of the broken claymore. But when with trembling voice he threw out dark hints of what most likely befell the missing men at nightfall, a deathlike silence fell on his rugged listeners, and so unnerved was the Earthstopper that he started at the creaking of the signboard, and shrunk from the thought of the journey before him. The tale ended, Andrew would have called for a quart of strong ale, but that he was short of cash and would not ask the landlord to put his name on the slate, “no tick” being the custom in the parish of Pendeen. Yet, for the sake of the company and the brightness of the room he stayed on and, not knowing the gossip of the mining village, strove, but in vain, to change the current of his thoughts by putting questions about the “bal” and even about the ponies in the submarine level, which extends more than a mile under the sea. At turning-out time, he put the cat that had fallen asleep on his knees gently on the floor, and lit the lantern. Leaving the inn, he went up the road with one of the miners who lived on the edge of the moorland, and when the wind slammed Jan Jose’s door behind him, Andrew, oppressed with a feeling of loneliness he seldom experienced, left the track and set out across the gale-swept waste leading to Kenidzhek, with uncle Zackey’s version of the mystery vivid in his brain. On the way he stopped two fox-earths, his tramp till then being void of incidents, save for the startled cry of a snipe that sprung from his feet near the edge of a marsh, and the scream of an owl that glided past him where, to avoid some waste heaps, he swung round by a mine-ruin. He had not, however, proceeded three furlongs from the spot where Shellal saw his light, before he got a fright which, for an instant, paralysed his steps and all but took his breath away. “Good Lor’! whatever es et?” he gasped as something white crossed his path. His first thought was that his fate had overtaken him, and that he would disappear as mysteriously as the two men of Zackey’s yarn. Recovering from the shock and feeling the ground still under his feet, he moved on, his stumbling steps betraying his agitation. “Couldn’ be a whi—a white hare; no, no, was too big for that and et didn’ loup along like a hare. Was et a livin’ crittur at all? Was et—rubbish!” “Pull yourself together, man,” said a voice within, “go back and see if the thing left any track.” Though the sweat stood in big drops on his face, and the gale which met him in the face impeded his steps, he conquered his fears so far as to go back. The thing had passed up the slope, he remembered, near the Giant’s Quoit, for against that he had momentarily leant for support; and there he bent over the ground, his face blanched, his eyes wild but eager as if they would devour the bare places between the tussocks that skirted the trickling water. Two paces above, on the margin of a shrunken pool made by the runnel, and clean-cut as in plaster, the light of the flickering flame fell on the track of a badger. “Good Lor’!” he exclaimed, as the footprints met his astonished eyes; and then hurriedly retraced his steps. The farther he got from the spot, the more strongly reason asserted itself over superstition. He argued thus with himself: “White, wadna? sartinly: the track of a badger, wadna? I should say so—” This with the trace of smile, for he had never seen more clearly-cut footprints. “Have I seen a white badger, I wonder? Auld Dick wance said as much and was laafed at for the rest of his days. No, et caan’t be, and yit ’tes hard to believe et edden. Sperrits doan’t maake badger-prints in the mud. How many glasses o’ beer did ee have at the ‘Tinners’? Only wan, worse luck? Es et saafe to tell the Squire? The Caastle waan’t hould un, he’ll be in such a pore.” It must be explained that Sir Bevil took the keenest pleasure in collecting curious specimens of the fauna of the district. In the entrance hall at the Castle were a cream-coloured otter, a grey fox, and a yellow seal, but as yet there was only a grey badger in a case below three pied Cornish choughs. And here let me mention an incident which bears on the story, inasmuch as it serves to explain the Earthstopper’s caution and hesitancy, despite his intense eagerness to report what he has seen. Some four months after the capture of the otter, he was standing under the Cairn near the Castle, at the edge of the brake which hounds were drawing, his eyes strained to catch a view of a fox. A slight rustle in the furze, and a brisk waving of Cunoval’s stern, had attracted his attention, or the animal he got a glimpse of might have escaped his notice. As it was, he saw only the body and tail of the creature as it flashed across a narrow opening between the bushes, but whatever it was, its coat and brush were as white as snow. Great was his excitement, but greater far was his chagrin, on looking over his shoulder as he ran in the direction of Sir Bevil, to see the snow-white creature climbing the stem of a fir that rose out of the brake. Of course, had he known that the Squire had brought home a big Persian cat on his return from Plymouth the week before, he could not have fallen into such an error as to believe that he had seen a white fox; cats, foreign or indigenous, being, unless their ears are cropped close, such inveterate poachers.

This experience and his narrow escape from making a fool of himself dwelt with the Earthstopper, and occurred to him more than once before he had completed his round. His work done, he has plenty of time to reconsider the evidence in cold reason now that the powers of darkness have crept back to their lairs. He is sitting in the lewth with his back against one of the boulders of a stone circle, set like a coronet on the brow of a hill commanding the steep slope over against him, down which the hounds will come on their way to the meet.

The sun that reddens the East has lifted the veil of night from the valley, revealing the smoke rising from a few chimneys where white-washed homesteads dot the countryside. Some cows, released from milking, are waiting for a boy to open the gate of a meadow; a flock of geese is making its way to a pool in the bottoms. The Earthstopper takes no notice of them, of the cosy rickyard, of the grim cairn beyond, or of the distant bay for all its roseate hue and lovely setting. His thoughts are centred on the ghostly thing that crossed his path, and as he cannot but believe, left a badger’s footprints on the edge of the runnel. In all his wanderings he has never met with anything to excite his interest and imagination so much, or to cause him such anxiety. He feels that he ought to tell the Squire, but by doing so he runs the risk of incurring the ridicule that had fallen on Dick Hal. He has every confidence in Sir Bevil’s discretion, but he knows that somehow, secrets leak out of Castles as freely as they do out of cottages. How unfortunate it was that owing to the wildness of the night Vennie had to be left to keep his grandchild company! The dog would have flown at the thing if it were a living creature, and that would have dispelled the slight misgiving he feels that the prints might have been those of a grey badger which had passed up the hill earlier. But in that case what could he have seen? A witch? or the lost soul that is said to wander there? No, no, the sun is too high in the heavens for him to heed old men’s tales. His mind is made up, he will risk everything and tell the Squire before the day is out, and the sooner the better for he will know no peace until his secret is shared. His decision made, he knocks the ashes from the pipe he has been smoking and, choosing a sheltered spot, lies down on the dry fern, and with a mossy stone for his pillow soon falls asleep, for he is tired after his long round and the buffeting of the wind. A couple of hours later he awakes with a start. Has he overslept himself? He looks at the sun. It is not mid-day, but still the hounds may have passed; Troubadour may have found him in the hollow where he lay, may have licked his face and gone on, without his being any the wiser. He scans the hills around, but can see no horsemen silhouetted against the sky; the few cattle in the valley are grazing undisturbed; he listens but he can hear no tell-tale sound, no toot of horn, no bark of farm-dog, only the voice of the dying gale, the faint rustle of dried bents, and the whistle of the golden plover. He runs to a gap he knows of at the far end of the croft, but finds in the mud there no track of horse or hound, and then, on looking across the valley, he sees the hounds coming down the steep lane where it skirts a stunted plantation, the space between the huntsman and the whippers-in flecked with the white markings of the pack. The meet is at a small village which he cannot see from his station, but he waits where he is, knowing that the cover below him is the first to be drawn. And now he begins to think of his report and to turn it over on his tongue. It runs smoothly enough until he comes to “white badger!” It is not the word white or the word badger that scares him, but the two together. “White mouse, white rat, white ferret, white cat, white otter, white elephant, whi—white badger.” Yes, white goes naturally enough with all but badger. Dare he tell the Squire after all? He becomes irresolute. He walks to and fro across the heathery space enclosed by the stones, and finally moves half-way down the hill and takes his stand behind a big boulder. Hardly has he gained it when a whipper-in gallops past him to take up a position on the far side of the stone circle; then Sir Bevil comes up the croft on the grey mare, and from his favourite spot, which is some twenty yards away from where Andrew is, watches the working of the hounds. Seeing after a time that a find is unlikely, Andrew half resolves to go, there and then, and unburden his mind. Twice he left the shelter of the rock and as often retreated, but not before Sir Bevil had remarked his hesitating behaviour. A third time he ventured a little further, and then, if he were about to retire again, the Squire’s voice checked him.

“Do you wish to speak to me, Andrew?”

“Yes, sir, I do and I doan’t.”

“No one trapping foxes, I hope?”

“No, sir, leastwise, not this side the country,” said Andrew, walking up to him.

“You’ve bad news of some sort, I fear.”

“No tedn that nither, sir. Et’s like thes—I was coming down-along round the foot of the Hootin’ Cairn, soon after midnight, when summat white crossed the ground afore me.”

“What was it?” said Sir Bevil with a smile, the eeriness of the place and the superstitious fear of the Earthstopper occurring to him.

“Thet’s just the point, sir.”

“Was it twenty paces ahead of you?”

“Lor’ bless your life, sir, ’twas touchin’, under my feet, so to spaake. ’Twas a darkish night, for all the moon was nearly full, but the thing showed up as white as a ghost, and the sight of un gov me a bra’ turn, the more so being where I were.”

“Is that all you have to say?—I see the hounds are moving off.”

“Only thes, sir; on second thoughts, I went back all of a quaake to see ef the thing left any track.”

“Well, did you find any?” said Sir Bevil, rather excitedly; till then he had not seen what the Earthstopper had been driving at.

“Iss, sir.”

“What was it, my man, what was it?”

“The track of a badger—of a heavy badger, the prent was that deep.”

“You believe then, Andrew, that you have seen a white badger, a white badger,” said the Squire, repeating the words deliberately and emphatically, as was his wont on the bench at crucial points of a witness’s evidence, and looking the while straight into the Earthstopper’s unflinching eyes.

“Iss, sir, I do; but aifter thet I wouldn’t care to tell anyone savin’ yoursel’.”

“Be at the Castle at nine o’clock to-morrow morning,” said Sir Bevil, somewhat peremptorily, and then galloped off after the hounds, leaving Andrew staring open-mouthed after him.

Most of Andrew’s deep thinking was done in the wooden arm-chair by his own fireside. There he is seated, the evening after his interview with Sir Bevil by the cover, considering the plan of campaign against the badger. The only sound in the room is the click of his grandchild’s knitting-needles. Vennie lies curled up on the floor at his feet. The light of the lamp falls on the Earthstopper’s face, and betrays its absent expression. He is wandering in thought over the moors and hills around Kenidzhek, and wondering which of the many earths he knows of, is the white badger’s. By careful examination, he will find sooner or later a few white bristles on the walls of one of them, which will give him the necessary clue. Should this plan fail, he will propose watching the earths, and will request the Squire to let him do so alone, lest the secret should leak out. Harrowing will his vigils be in that weird district; but his fear of ridicule is greater than his fear of ghosts, and he would rather have his grey hairs blanched with fright than become the laughing-stock of the countryside.

“I hope thee’st nawthin’ troublin’ ee, granfer?” said the girl, who had been casting anxious glances from time to time at the old man.

“No, no, my dear, only I dropped across a badger laast night, and I’ve bin thinkin’ how I might come by hes eearth: I’m to see the Squire about et furst thing in the mornin’.”

“But badgers are plenty enuf, granfer, I daresay Vennie could find wan in a few minits ef you were to turn her out on the moor.”

“Iss, iss, my dear, grey badgers es plenty enuf as you say, too plenty for me, the varmints; but ’twas a white wan I seed.”

“A white wan, granfer?”

“Iss, a white wan; surely thee dosn’t misdoubt me, Ravena?”

“No, no, granfer dear, I make no doubt thee didst see wan, and I do wish thee luck in catchen of un. You’ll dig it out, I s’pose?”

“Iss, iss, the Squire says theere’s only wan way of taakin’ a badger by fair play, and thet’s by diggin’ un out.”

“Then you must find where et’s earth es, and that may take a bra’ passel of time.”

“Ezackly so, the Squire may fret and fume, but theere, nawthin’ can be done till we knaw wheere et es. Now, my dear, let us be off upstairs for I’m tired.”

After kissing the child, he went to bed and slept soundly. He was early astir, lit the fire, as he always did when at home, and, whilst the kettle was boiling, fetched a pitcher of water from the spring, and some sods from the little turf-rick, for the day’s use. After breakfast he set out to lay his plans before the Squire. He had no doubt that they would be accepted, for he could see no alternative, and in matters of this kind the Squire had generally fallen in with his views. His surprise then at the sight that met his eyes as he entered the yard of the Castle may be imagined. The head keeper was seated in a wagonette in charge of three terriers; opposite him was a farmhand with a collection of picks and spades; whilst the coachman, holding the reins in one hand, was putting a sack in the boot with the other. “Well, well,” he muttered as he stood near the big gates like one frozen to the cobbles, “what in the world es the maanin’ of thes?” Impulsive he knew the Squire to be; but was there ever, thought he, such folly as all this preparation for digging out a badger without first knowing where it was? Granting he had seen a white badger, its holt might be almost anywhere within four miles of the Giant’s Quoit where he had found the footprints, and inside that radius he knew of at least two score of earths: and was it possible that the Squire could have said anything about the badger? These thoughts passed through the Earthstopper’s mind as he stood there resting on his blackthorn like one “mazed,” whilst the men in the trap exchanged winks, and wondered what ailed him. There was one thing he could do, and would do, no matter what the consequences: that was to see the Squire, and point out the absurdity of going on such an expedition.

“Anythin’ amiss wi’ ee, An’rew? arn’t ee going to jump up? et’s a quarter to nine and we’ve bin ready since half-past eight.”

Without replying to the keeper, he inquired rather sharply, “Wheere’s the Squire?”

“Ee’s gone along these two hours and eh left word as you was to follow on.”

This made the blood mount to his cheek; and for a moment he thought of going back home and having nothing to do with the business. But mastering this impulse he walked up to the trap without a word—his lips were too tightly compressed to say anything—and took his seat by the side of the coachman. In a short time the wagonette was rattling along a country lane leading to the St Just turnpike road.

“Wheere are ee drivin’ to, coachman?” said Andrew, by way of a feeler when he had found his tongue.

“My horders is to drive to William Trevaskis’ farm as lies under the ’Ooting Cairn.”

“What’s up to taake the Squire out so eearly?”

“Hi don’t know that I can tell ee, but be careful ’ow you speaks to ’im; ee’s that hexcited, you’d think he’d lost the blackbird with a white topknot.”

Andrew, who from the moment he had entered the stable-yard had been under the impression that everyone at the Castle must have heard about the white badger, would have been hopeful now that such was not the case, were it not for an otherwise unaccountable grin that puckered the coachman’s cheek and the singularly jaunty way in which he handled the whip. However, he kept his misgivings to himself, and whilst seemingly engaged in following the fresh tracks of a horse that had galloped along the side of the road that morning, was ransacking his brain to remember whether he had ever seen a badger’s earth on Cairn Kenidzhek. The fact is, he knew much less of the Hooting Cairn than of any hill to the westward of Crobben, nor could he call to mind a fox run to ground there. Had it been Mulfra, the Galver, Sancreed Beacon, Bartinney, or Chapel Cairn Brea, he could have walked straight to every holt on their rocky slopes. After nearly an hour’s drive the pile of weird-looking rocks shows plainly against the sky; a few minutes later the face of the hill comes in view and at its base Trevaskis’ house on the edge of a cultivated patch reclaimed many years ago from the moorland that stretches away to the northern cliffs. The sun catches Shellal’s tiny attic window, the leats where his springes are set, the pool beyond the broad belt of yellow reeds, and lights the white-crested waves of the sea.

When near enough, Andrew makes out the farmer in his shirt sleeves and then—can he believe his own eyes?—three, four, five miners against the turf-rick; Trevaskis is holding a tubbal in one hand and—yes, a furze-chopper in the other; picks and shovels are piled in front of the miners; Shellal is holding two buckets, no doubt containing water for the terriers; and, by all that’s good, it is a pair of badger-tongs that the Squire has just brought out of the house, his fingers fidgeting with the guard. In short, a more completely equipped party for an assault on a badger’s fortress and, judging by the laughter, a more merry one, it would be difficult to imagine. But the high spirits of Squire, farmer, and miner are not shared by the Earthstopper. The elaborate preparations, no less than the hilarity, seemed to mock him. He foresaw that the day’s proceedings would bring life-long ridicule on himself. The whole countryside would get to hear of Andrew leading the Squire a fool’s chase after a white badger, forsooth! and wherever he went people would jeer at his powers of observation or treat him with silent pity, according to their dispositions. Now after doing his duty to the best of his ability for seven-and-thirty years, and being “plagued to death” well-nigh every other week during the hunting season by badgers scratching out his stoppings and letting the foxes in—an annoyance that perhaps no other Earthstopper in the whole of England has to put up with—for the faithful henchman on whom success depended to be dragged willy-nilly into this business was enough not only to rouse his ire but to shake his fealty to his master. If Andrew was ever vexed in his life, he was vexed now, “vexed as fire.” Near the Squire he would not go, unless sent for, not he; to a peremptory summons he would turn a deaf ear. Still, enraged though he was, he would not shirk his duty, hopeless as his task might be. He would search till nightfall, though a dozen giggling louts dogged his heels. He knew that the badger’s holt might possibly be on Cairn Kenidzhek, but it was about one chance in a hundred. He jumped down from the trap before it reached the gate where the Squire was awaiting it, and seizing the opportunity whilst Sir Bevil was talking to the keeper, jumped the wall and going up to Trevaskis, asked him if he knew of a badger’s earth on the hill.

“Niver had no bisiness,” he replied in a very loud voice, “to climb un not even high by day. I laaves the furze-cuttin’ to Shellaal. The nighest eearth beknown to me es in the croft under the Goomp.” Muttering maledictions on the “git chucklehead,” Andrew shied off long before the harangue was finished and, without consulting Shellal, who stood there open-mouthed and still gripping the two buckets, crossed the lane and began with his long strides the ascent of the crag-topped hill. It was the best thing he could have done. Only by tremendous exertions could he hope to work off his rage, and how he did exert himself!

Seldom had he put his hard sinews and strong muscles to such a strain as he did that morning, when searching the rugged slope in quest of the badger’s earth.

Now, he was lost to sight in some tangled gulley where he tore through stunted blackthorn and brambles to reach its inmost recess; now, on hands and knees, he explored furze-screened places between small groups of boulders that dotted the higher slopes like outworks to the rocky citadel on their crest; now he scanned for beaten track the starved herbage that margined the Cairn; now the crevices between the rocks for trodden lichen that might betray the badger’s way to his fastness. All to no purpose! There remained the other side of the hill to explore; and thither he went. Some half-way down the slope there is a belt of ground so barren as to suggest a mineral lode just below the surface. Along it the Earthstopper proceeded at a rapid pace, his eyes scrutinising the edge of the sparse cover that skirted it. All at once he stopped in his stride as he lit on the run of some animal leading towards the Cairn. Some distance up it was joined, beneath a thorn bush, by a more clearly defined track, and a little way beyond the junction, where the single track passed between two boulders and was arched over with dead bracken and withered bents, so unmistakable was the “creep” that the Earthstopper knew that he was on the trail of a badger. His craft was scarcely needed now, but he followed the trodden path jealously as if once lost it could with difficulty be recovered. Farther up the slope it passed under a clump of furze that there ran up to the foot of the Cairn. The bushes were thick and luxuriant, with here and there a yellow bloom, being protected from the westerly wind by the Cairn, and spared by Trevaskis since Shellal had struck against working on that side of the rocks without further rise of wages. On all fours the Earthstopper crept under them, wormed his way quickly forward over the dry spines, parting the furze above his head now and again to let the light in, and convince himself that he was following the track.

Some distance in he came upon a heap of soil at the mouth of a badger’s earth. He restrains the delight he feels, for fear it may be abandoned. At once he examines the mouth of the set. The floor is well beaten and too hard to record footprints, no moss grows there, no spider’s web curtains the entrance.

Lying flat on the ground with his head well inside the hole, he sniffs the air of the tunnel, but can detect no taint of any inmate. “Hanrew, Hanrew, wheere are ee?” It is the voice of Shellal, whose weather-beaten and scared face shows round a big boulder, whence he can see the eastern face of the hill. The Earthstopper hears him, but is too engrossed in his work to reply, and too far in the earth to make anyone hear him, except possibly the badger, if he is at home. “Hanrew, Hanrew,” Shellal calls at the top of his voice; and getting no answer but the echo of the rocks, he hurries back, fully convinced that nothing more will ever be seen of the Earthstopper. Andrew then gets some matches out of his pocket and, striking one, holds it against the left wall of the earth. His face, which is all aglow, brightens as he inspects it. Lighting another match he removes something from the smooth surface and backs out along the track he came by, no longer angry and desperate, but excited and exultant. Sir Bevil and the rest of the party now arrived at that side of the Cairn are looking round and wondering what has become of Andrew, when they hear a rustling in the furze and at length see his hobnailed boots project from the thick bushes.