Butler.
NOT long ago it was believed that Old Nick frequently appeared in the form of a bull, and that he often placed money to tempt the unwary. The following story—told us of the late Sir Rose Price's huntsman—will help to explain notions which are not yet wholly exploded.
When the huntsman was a boy his parents lived in Nancledra, and sent him daily to a school two or three miles off, till he was about thirteen years old. He had his dinner sent with him, and he often minched. One morning he wandered away over the moors in search of birds' nests and rabbits' burrows. He had a good pasty in his dinner-bag and the day passed pleasantly in birds-nesting, searching for young rabbits, and playing about a tin-stream, three miles or so up the Bottom, where he stayed till the streamers left work. Then he took his course for home, over hedges and ditches, wandering wherever his fancy led him, till almost dark, when he found himself in a large hilly field not far from Nancledra. In making a short cut for home he crossed this field, and, when near the middle of it, he heard a bull bellowing, and shortly saw a large black one making towards him with tail up and head down; sometimes it would stop to tear up the ground, and fling its horns as if to get in practice to toss the boy; who being far from any hedges, there seemed no way of escape from the field before the bull could overtake him. But, luckily, within a few yards, there was a large rock, to which he ran and climbed it, a moment only before the bull came to it.
The brute kept on, for a long time, going round and round the rock, bellowing and tearing up the turf as if in a rage, till at last, tired with his vain endeavours—as it seemed—to get at the boy, it hoisted its tail like a flag-staff, galloped off, and vanished in a minute.
The boy didn't venture from his fort for sometime after the bull left. At length he 'cramed' down over a shelving side of the rock on all fours, head foremost—it was too dark to see where to put his feet. When he touched ground with his hand he felt and took up what he thought, by the feel of it, to be a penny-piece or a large button. He ran home and saw, by light shining through a window, that he had found a penny. When the way was clear, he made a place to hide it, in a hole over the chimney-stool—the fire-place was a large open one for burning furze and turf.
Next night, about the same hour as on the preceding, he went on the rock, 'cramed' down again, and found two penny-pieces, which he hoarded in the hole; and, night after night, he visited the rock, found the money doubled each succeeding night, and picked up silver money in other places where one would the least expect to find it, till his hiding-place was nearly full in a few weeks.
How much longer this luck would have continued there is no knowing; for, one night, when he thought there was nobody about, his mother came in and found him standing on the chimney-stool so earnest about something that he didn't see her watching him, and he kept handling his money till she said,
"Whatever hast thee got there between the stones, that thee art always stealing into the chimney, whenever thee dost think nobody is noticing of thee."