His glance roamed down to another village—not reared high like Weathersett, but skulking in a lowland hollow on the far side of the benty waste. He forgot trolls and all their phantom kindred. They were unsubstantial, but the people who lived there in Garsykes village were flesh and blood and a standing menace to the country-side.
A strange look stole across Hardcastle’s face. Contempt, antagonism, the shadow of some restless fear, followed each other as he stood watching Garsykes; for distrust of its folk had been in his mother’s milk, and in the tales passed down for generations.
They had many by-names, like all tribes greatly feared. Men of the Wilderness, some called them; others the Broken People, or the Lost Company. Names of that sort were no more than wind in the reeds.
The stark truth remained that Garsykes village was the abiding-place of every rogue about the fells. Sheep stealers had foregathered there since time out of mind—men who had done murder on the high fells—lesser rogues who had snatched purses at village fairs, and come breathless from pursuit. Such pursuit ended always on the verge of Garsykes, for none but vagabonds dared enter.
Hardcastle remembered his father’s downright struggle against the tribute these Lost Folk levied on the country-side. They were a small village then, but had grown big on what they fed on, till nowadays even strapping farmers paid toll for a safe home-coming.
Hardcastle swung down the road till a turning of the way showed him suddenly the whole, wide front of the highlands that stepped out to his own Logie country.
Pengables caught the mellow sunlight, and his rocks were softened till they showed like some misty castle seen in dreams. The brackens were on fire, and slender rowans crimsoned up to the wise, stalwart pines that fringed the moor.
This was a man’s land, wide, free-striding, its shoulders pushing up to freedom and the sky. It had fathered and mothered his orphaned life. He knew its every dell and furrow, and from the heart of it a crisp, sweet breeze ran out in greeting.
He went down the lone track—past Drumly Ghyll, where Riding Nevison had leaped his horse from cliff to cliff in half-forgotten days—and came to the bend that showed Langerton below him, a hamlet clustered round its water-mill. He could almost hear the mill-wheel droning—a goblin that toiled underground, to his awed boyish fancy—a goblin still, though manhood had killed many pleasant, eerie fears of that sort.
Hardcastle, not knowing why, halted in his stride, and stood looking out across the waste. If the hills were brown and steadfast washed by rain and sun, below him lurked the mines, the bogs that sucked a man down, dragging at him till limb by limb the chill ooze chained him. And there were the Wilderness Men, whose enmity was a dread thing to earn.