The pack-horses that entered Back o’ th’ Mooin from the Trawden side had to pass, a mile south of Booth, a place called Noon Nick; and Noon Nick marked the horses of the Trawden pack unmistakably. This Nick was a deep stony gap in the hill where the land had slipped and settled, and the horses had to wind for a quarter of a mile along the extreme edge of a ledge scarce six foot wide, one pack overhanging the gloomy bottom. The trick they picked up from this place was that they would never approach within four foot of any wall. Sometimes a stone, dislodged from the ledge, would roll down the gap, filling the Nick with rattling echoes; and sometimes the grey stones would start and roll of themselves, with a prolonged and dreary sound.
On a sunny May afternoon there moved down in this bottom Eastwood Ellah and Arthur Monjoy. The grey boulders were bright under the blue sky, and their shadows harshly defined, and near at hand the fractured pieces glinted with tiny metallic pin-points. A few pewits wheeled and piped; save for them, only the crunch and rattle of the stones underfoot broke the stillness.
Eastwood Ellah’s appearance was extraordinary. He was hatless and unbraced, and his feet were bare and cut and covered with blood. His face was crimson, and his prominent glassy eyes stared unnaturally before him. From out of his pocket peeped his brass ear-trumpet. He perspired violently; the whole of his scalp twitched with the corrugation of his brows. One hand was outstretched to balance his painful steps; and in the other he bore that of which Arthur Monjoy, at the meeting of the Executive, had refused to speak—(for the methodical Matthew, who scoffed at ballads, would have ranked this as mere full-moon madness)—the fork of green hazel, the virgula divina, the rod that will curl and turn in a man’s hands and drip out its sap over the spot where silver lies.
All at once Ellah gave an inarticulate cry, shrill as the crying of the wheeling pewits, and shouted hoarsely: “I can’t—I can’t—I tell ye I can’t bide it!”
“Can’t bide what?” Monjoy demanded, turning in an ill humour.
“The sight o’ my own blood. I say I can’t—’twill madden me——”
Monjoy led him to a grey boulder, bade him turn his face away, and made such a cleansing of his wounded feet as he was able with a handkerchief. Ellah moaned miserably the while. Monjoy drew on his stockings for him and flung him his boots; then he began to stride frowning up and down on the harshly grating stones. Presently he returned, plucked the trumpet from Ellah’s pocket, and thrust it into his hand.
“I’ll not quarrel,” he shouted curtly, “but the Lord made a womanish piece when He made you!”
Ellah, the trumpet at his ear, chewed at his lip and whimpered:
“You know I ha’ my iggs—you ought to pity me, same as others; the sight of my own blood’s like a flame i’ my brain——”