"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?"