“Noo I reck'n we're in for bloody times amang the sheep for a while,” said the Master, as Jim picked up his bags.
“Better a sheep nor a mon,” answered the postman, still harping on the old theme.
Chapter XVI. THE BLACK KILLER
THAT, as James Moore had predicted, was the first only of a long succession of such solitary crimes.
Those who have not lived in a desolate country like that about the Muir Pike, where sheep are paramount and every other man engaged in the profession pastoral, can barely imagine the sensation aroused. In market place, tavern, or cottage, the subject of conversation was always the latest sheep-murder and the yet-undetected criminal.
Sometimes there would be a lull, and the shepherds would begin to breathe more freely. Then there would come a stormy night, when the heavens were veiled in the cloak of crime, and the wind moaned fitfully over meres and marches, and another victim would be added to the lengthening list.
It was always such black nights, nights of wind and weather, when no man would be abroad, that the murderer chose for his bloody work; and that was how he became known from the Red Screes to the Muir Pike as the Black Killer. In the Daleland they still call a wild, wet night “A Black Killer's night:” for they say: “His ghaist'll be oot the night.”
There was hardly a farm in the countryside but was marked with the seal of blood. Kenmuir escaped, and the Grange; Rob Saunderson at the Holt, and Tupper at Swinsthwaite; and they were about the only lucky ones.
As for Kenmuir, Tammas declared with a certain grim pride: “He knows better'n to coom wheer Th' Owd Un be.” Whereat M'Adam was taken with a fit of internal spasms, rubbing his knees and cackling insanely for a half-hour afterward. And as for the luck of the Grange—well, there was a reason for that too, so the Dalesmen said.