Plainly the man was terrified, and I asked him what he feared.
"The good folk, Lord."
"Pixies?--Do they come when one speaks of the lost valley?"
"Speak lower, Lord,--lower! Look, yonder it is again!"
Then I also saw in the dusk the figure of a man who crept softly from one great boulder to another, and without thinking of the terror of the shepherd I spurred my horse, and rode straight for the rock behind which the figure disappeared, having no mind to have an arrow put into me at short range by one of the men of Tregoz--or of Morfed--unawares.
The shepherd howled in fright when he was left, but I did not heed him, and in a moment I was round the rock and almost on the cowering man whom I had seen. He turned to fly, and I cried to him to stop, but he only got another rock between me and him, for the hillside was covered with them, and shrank behind it, so that I could only see his wild eyes as he glared at me across it. He said nothing, and I did not think that he was armed, so far as the dim evening light would let me see.
"Why are you dogging me thus?" I cried; "come out, and no harm will befall you."
I rode round, and he shifted as I did, so that he was between me and the shepherd, and then I called to the latter that this was but a man, and bade him come and help me to catch him. Whereon the man looked swiftly over his shoulder and saw that he was fairly trapped.
"Keep him back, Master," he said in a strange growling voice, which was not that of a Dartmoor savage either in tone or speech. "Keep him back, and we will talk together; I mean no harm."
But I had no need to tell the shepherd not to come, for he bided where he was, being afraid; but I held up my hand to him as if to bid him be still, lest the man should know that he would not help me.