All this while Parson Lolly, whose sphere of influence included Aidenn Forest, had been watching the career of the ambitious necromancer with baleful interest, and now the older magician believed that he must try conclusions with the usurper or be shorn of his potency in this region. In the guise of a skipping hare he invaded the castle, and having come into the presence of its lord, suddenly assumed his wizard shape and challenged Sir Pharamond to a contest for supremacy. This took place at the Four Stones (monuments of an eldern time still standing lonely in a field-corner some miles beyond the mouth of the Vale) and the Lord of Aidenn proved to have an Evil Eye so strong the Parson was put to rout. In the form of a buzzard he fled to the desolate summit of Black Mixen at the top of Aidenn Forest. But Sir Pharamond, having assumed the shape of a small caterpillar, clung with all his legs between the shoulders of the bird and reconfronted his rival when he alighted where The Riggles are now. Those enormous scratches are the marks of his buzzard-claws.
Then when the Parson strove with powers enforced by the deadly fear he was in, the tide of battle turned. On that solitary hilltop, moreover, the elemental influences were on the side of the older magician. With a dart of his beak the Parson sank a deep wound in the cheek of Sir Pharamond, destroying the efficacy of his Evil Eye. Then it was the Lord of Aidenn’s time to flee, and he escaped to the innermost black sanctuary of his castle.
But Parson Lolly overthrew the castle, whose skeleton of clay slate chunks lies wasting up the Vale to this day.
Thenceforth, although Sir Pharamond lived on, his magic was only the shadow of what it had been, and he lived in perpetual dread of Parson Lolly. He built him a new castle where the mill had stood, and where Highglen House stands to-day. But he never found content within his re-erected halls. The menace of the Parson hung over his days and nights. Whenever in his woeful heart he meditated regaining his former ascendancy, from the cheek of his portrait on the wall blood would run and in his own cheek he would feel overwhelming pain, as when the Parson had driven his buzzard-beak into the flesh.
“One moment!” interjected Crofts. “Do you mean the painting in the corridor?”
“No, sir; it’s that little one way up on the wall of the Hall of the Moth as I mean.”
“Ah!” My host licked somewhat dry lips. “Go on.”
“There’s not so much more to it, sir, I expect. The Parson finally would make an end of Sir Pharamond. He sent Sir Pharamond’s own corpse-candle for Sir Pharamond to see.”
“Corpse-candle!”
“A dimmery light, sir—it floats in the air. It’s a sure sign of a death in these parts. And the Tolaeth sounded, too; so Sir Pharamond knew then that it was all up with him.”