Meanwhile Mr. Pogson, after purchasing some dozen or so of fine porkers, and a bottle of brandy to help him in the arduous task of getting them home safely, began in the late afternoon to drive them down the long high road towards the wood. The pigs were lively, and their owner began to be a little unsteady on his legs—a sensation which he more than once sought to correct by a draught of strong ale at a roadside public-house. The remedy did not have the desired effect, and his progress became slower and slower; but in spite of all obstacles, and by dint of extreme severity and a lavish outlay of bad language, he contrived to conduct himself and his charges across the bridge and the meadows to the edge of the wood without serious mishap, arriving there about the time at which Weekes was prowling in his yard after the barn owl. The bottle of brandy was by this time more than half empty, and the wood was as dark as pitch.
If Mr. Pogson had been in full possession of his wits he would hardly have tried to force his way through the wood, and would have avoided the bridle-path, and taken his pigs a couple of miles round by the road; but he had gone like an unreasoning animal in the way he was accustomed to, and now it was too late to turn back. He took another pull at the bottle, switched the nearest pigs, and pulling himself for a moment together, forced his drove into the narrow ride, trusting that they would follow their noses and keep to the open path.
In the dense black darkness and stillness, a sleepy and a sickly feeling came over Mr. Pogson’s usually hide-bound senses, from which he was only for a moment awakened by a sudden movement of the pigs in front of him. Whether it were a badger in the path, or a prowling fox that had frightened them, certain it is that at this moment they all faced about, and rushing with loud squeakings past the legs of their driver, vanished in a general stampede away into the wood.
Mr. Pogson stood aghast, and leant against a tree-trunk for support. The noise of the pigs died away, and he was alone—alone in blank darkness. Even pigs are company, and now he would have given a good deal for the companionship of a single one of his victims. There was a singing in his ears, a cold sweat on his hard brow; he felt quite unable to go further; his head swam.
Suddenly he heard a voice from overhead—a gentle voice, reproachful and somewhat hollow and ghostly—
“Whoo? Tu-whoo?”
Mr. Pogson felt a creepy sensation, and would have cast himself to the ground and hidden his face in the bluebells, but again the voice asked—
“Whoo? Whoo? Tu-whoo?”
“Pogson o’ Highfield,” cried the belated man in answer. But in still more reproachful accents, the voice demanded for the third time—
“Whoo? Tu-whoo?”