By the evening of the day when Toller disappeared from the Perryman sheepfolds he had completed the long walk to his former haunts, and recovered his weapons from under the cairn where he had carefully hidden them six years before. The axe, of course, was uninjured; but the slings were rotten. As soon as it was dark, therefore, Toller stole down to the pastures, captured a steer, brained it with the flint axe, stripped off the skin, made a fire, roasted a piece of the warm flesh, covered his tracks, and before the sun was up had made twenty miles of the return journey, with half a dozen fine new slings concealed beneath his coat. He arrived at Deadborough at nightfall the day but one following, having taken a circuitous route far from the highroad. He at once made his way into the hills.
Beyond the furthest outposts of the Perryman farm lie extensive wolds rising rapidly into desolate regions where sheep can scarcely find pasture. In this region Toller concealed himself. About two miles beyond the old quarry, on a slaty hillside, he found a deep pit, which had probably been used as a water-hole in prehistoric times; and here he built himself a hut. He made the walls out of the stones of a ruined sheep-fold; he roofed them with a sheet of corrugated iron, stolen from the outbuildings of a neighbouring farm, and covered the iron with sods; he built a fire-place with a flue, but no chimney; he caused water from a spring to flow into a hollow beside the door. Then he collected slate, loose stones, and earth; and, by heaping these against the walls of the hut, he gave the whole structure the appearance of a mound of rubbish. Human eyes rarely came within sight of the spot; but even a keen observer of casual objects would not have suspected that the mound represented any sort of human dwelling. It was a masterpiece of protective imitation, an exact replica of Toller's previous abode on Clun Downs. His fire burned only by night.
The furnishing of this simple establishment consisted of a feather bed, which rested on slabs of slate supported by stones,—whence obtained was never known, but undoubtedly stolen. The coverlet was three sheepskins sewn together, the pillow also a sheepskin, coiled round a cylinder of elastic twigs. The table was a deal box, once the property of Messrs. Tate, the famous refiners of sugar. The chair was a duplicate of the table. The implements were all of flint, neatly bound in their handles with strips of hide. There was the axe for slaughter, a dagger for cutting meat, a hammer for breaking bones, a saw and scrapers of various size—the plunder of some barrow on Clun Downs. Under the slates of the bed lay a collection of slings.
In this place Toller lived undiscovered for several months, issuing thence as occasion required in quest of food. This he obtained by night forays upon distant farms, bringing back mutton or beef, lamb or sucking pig, a turkey, a goose, a couple of chickens, according to the changes of his appetite or the seasonableness of the dish. Fruit, vegetables, and potatoes were obtained in the same manner. In addition, all the game of the hills was at his mercy, and he had fish from the stream. It was characteristic of Toller's cunning that his plunder was all obtained from afar, and seldom twice from the same place. He would go ten miles to the north to steal a lamb; next time, as far to the south to steal a goose. The plundered area lay along the circumference of great circles, with radii of ten, fifteen, twenty miles, of which his abode was the centre. This put pursuers off the track, and caused them to look for him everywhere but where he was. The police were convinced, for example, that he was hiding in Clun Downs. The steer he had slaughtered on his first return had been discovered, as Toller intended it to be; and, in order to keep up the fiction of his presence in that neighbourhood, he repeated his exploit a month later, and slaughtered a second steer in the very pasture where he had killed the first.
Nor was his favourite amusement denied him. He knew the movements of every shepherd on the uplands, and, by choosing his routes, could wander for miles, slinging stones as he went, without risk of discovery. Whether during these months he saw any human beings is unknown; certainly no human being recognised him. His power of self-concealment amounted to genius.
Such was the second madness of Shepherd Toller. Things from the abyss of Time that float upwards into dreams—sleeping things whose breath sometimes breaks the surface of our waking consciousness, like bubbles rising from the depths of Lethe—these had become the sober certainties of Toller's life. The superincumbent waters had parted asunder, and the children of the deep were all astir. Toller had awakened into a past which lies beyond the graves of buried races and had joined his fathers in the morning of the world.
Towards the end of the summer Toller's health began to decline. He was attacked by fierce paroxysms of internal pain, which left him weak and helpless. The distant forays had to be abandoned; there was no more slinging of stones; he had great difficulty in obtaining food. He craved most for milk, and this he procured at considerable risk of discovery by descending before dawn into the lowlands and milking, or partially milking, one of the Perryman cows; for the animals knew his voice and were accustomed to his touch.
This was the posture of his affairs when one day he became apprised of the presence in the neighbourhood of the picnic-party aforesaid. He stalked them with care, saw the preparation of their meal, eyed the large basket carried by the grooms, and thought with longing of the tea it was sure to contain, and of the brandy that might be there also. To be possessed of one or both of these things would at that moment have satisfied the all-inclusive desire of the sick man's soul, and he thought of every possible device and contrivance by which he could get them into his hands. None promised well. At last he half resolved on the desperate plan of scaring the pleasure-seekers from their camp by bombarding the ground with stones—a plan which he remembered to have proved effective with a party of ladies on Clun Downs. But he doubted his strength for such a sustained effort, and reflected that a party which contained so many men, even if forced to retreat, would be sure to take their provender with them. While he was thus reflecting he saw the kettle hoisted on the tripod, shining and glinting in the sun. Never had Toller beheld a more tempting mark. The range was easy; his station was well hidden; and the kettle was the hated symbol of his disappointed hopes. "One more, and then I've done," I sez to myself—thus he reported to Snarley Bob—"and I went back for the old sling, feelin' better than I'd done for weeks. I picks the best stone I could find, and kep' on whirlin' her round my head all the way back. Then I slaps her in, and blessed if I didn't take the kettle first shot!"