Some eight months after—in the time of blackberries—some youngsters, questing among the ferns on the hillside, stumbled across the fogou and crept in to explore it.
They rushed down the hillside screaming with terror; and, when safe among the cottages, began to babble incoherently that there was a ghost up yonder in the "owld hunted fogou," they had seen its face—and it was white—so white!
The villagers began to have an inkling of the truth, and went toiling up through the ferns in a body.
"As like as not 'tes he, poor saul," they whispered awesomely as they clambered up the windy ridges of the hill.
True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the fogou. But whether or not he had again met Hate there, is one of the questions the gossips have still to solve.
FOOTNOTES:
[N] A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.
[O] A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursing stones."