The horn recalls the reluctant hounds, revelling in the scent that the stream carries down. There they come past the Earthstopper. See how eagerly they are drawing the banks, how impatient the check makes them. Gellert, who has the best nose of the pack, is getting close to the clump of iris; the next moment his tell-tale tongue warns the pack that he has discovered the line of the quarry, and with triumphant clamour they breast the hillside on its hot trail. The game varmint has nearly gained the crest, but he can scarcely hope to reach the adjacent valley. He seems to be standing still, in comparison with the hounds, which, with hackles up, are now racing for his blood. He is not half-way down the plantation when they stream over the wall that bounds it. Troubadour, ever to the fore, gets a view of the beaten creature struggling on; but above the ominous whimpers of the pack the otter hears the roar of the fall, and this braces him to a final effort. Troubadour is all but on him as he springs from the high bank, and the next instant the spray flies from the pool as otter and hound strike the water.
Without showing himself the hunted beast seeks refuge behind the roots of the big elm which, a week before, had attracted the eye of the Earthstopper. The otter is in sore plight, but little does he fear the infuriated pack now. They may bay outside his stronghold to their heart’s content. But he’s not done with yet. Venom and Vixen have just disappeared between the coils of the roots and are making for a ledge within, where the creature is resting and breathing heavily. Then Sir Bevil, the parson, the doctor, and the Earthstopper come rushing down between the trees. The next moment Andrew is lying at full length and listening. With his ear close to the ground, he can hear the terriers yapping six or eight feet below.
“They caan’t get at un, sir,” says he, rising to his feet after a time, his voice scarcely audible above the clamour of the hounds and the roar of the fall.
“Then we’ll leave him, we won’t dig. He’s a grand beast and deserves his life. You look disappointed, Andrew?”
“No, sir, should only a’ liked to a’ seed the pad of un.”
With some difficulty the hounds are called off and the terriers induced to come out. The otter lived some years after, but Andrew never spurred him again.
CHAPTER VIII
The White Badger of Cairn Kenidzhek
THE EARTHSTOPPER IN DOUBT
It is with some misgiving that I venture to insert this tale, inasmuch as the telling involves mention of a place so weird that readers strange to the Land’s End district may be incredulous of its existence.
For to this day an evil repute clings to Cairn Kenidzhek amongst those best fit to judge its character—to wit, the few dwellers round the base of the rugged hill on which it frowns. Within half a mile or so of it, there are three small farmhouses, counting the one on the lower moor by the quaking bog where Jim Trevaskis used to live, and from the occupants, if you first win their confidence and are betrayed by no “furrin” accent, you may learn some of the strange occurrences that take place about it.
With bated breath they will tell you that on pitch-dark nights the pile of rocks is at times lit up with an unearthly light, and that now and then, especially when trouble is brooding and the death-watch has been ticking in the “spence,” they hear, as they lie awake, the stony hill ring under the stroke of galloping hoofs. Whether these and other eerie happenings, around which legends have shaped themselves, can be explained on scientific grounds, matters not to them, for the Celt of the countryside turns a deaf ear to new-fangled notions and clings to the traditions of his fathers. But of all the haunting memories of the Cairn, that which inspires the greatest dread is associated with the disappearance of two men who were last seen toiling up the hill at the close of a wild winter’s day. No legend is this coming down from a remote past; for Dick Shellal, Trevaskis’ farmhand, who could count up to forty with the help of his fingers, had heard his great-grandfather say that the mystery was talked about when he was a boy as if it were a thing of yesterday.