‘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 ony common tool.’
‘Have you never tried to follow the thieves?’
‘Have I no?’ he asked, grimly. ‘Hit 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 twalmonth 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.
III. THE SCARTS OF THE MUNERAW
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 lochside, 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