Intense excitement—that the track had been followed by huntsmen and hounds, until they had come to a forest—from which the hounds had retreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared to enter the forest.
Notes and Queries, 7-9-18:
Whole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger had left marks in the snow: this was determined, and the excitement had "dropped to a dead calm in a single day."
Notes and Queries, 7-9-70:
That for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, which his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth: that they were hoof-like marks—but had been made by a biped.
Notes and Queries, 7-9-253:
Well remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the excitement and consternation of "some classes." He says that a kangaroo had escaped from a menagerie—"the footprints being so peculiar and far apart gave rise to a scare that the devil was loose."
We have had a story, and now we shall tell it over from contemporaneous sources. We have had the later accounts first very largely for an impression of the correlating effect that time brings about, by addition, disregard and distortion. For instance, the "dead calm in a single day." If I had found that the excitement did die out rather soon, I'd incline to accept that nothing extraordinary had occurred.
I found that the excitement had continued for weeks.
I recognize this as a well-adapted thing to say, to divert attention from a discorrelate.