She looked at him, her long-lashed eyes a little serious. "But
you--how are you going to get home? It's getting late to be out on the
moor afoot." Maynard laughed. "Oh, I'm all right, thanks!" He sniffed the warm September night. "I
think I shall sleep here, as a matter of fact. I'm a gipsy by instinct--

    "'Give to me the life I love,
    Let the lave go by me,
    Give the jolly Heaven above----'"

He broke off, arrested by her unsmiling eyes. She was silent a moment. "People don't as a rule sleep out--about here." The words came jerkily,
as if she were forcing a natural tone into her voice. "No?" He was accustomed to being questioned on his unconventional mode
of life, and was prepared for the usual expostulations. She looked
abruptly towards him. "Are you superstitious?" He laughed and shook his head. "I don't think so. But what has that got to do with it?" She hesitated, flushing a little. "There is a legend--people about here say that the moor here is haunted. There is a Thing that hunts people to death!" He laughed outright, wondering how old she was. Seventeen or eighteen,
perhaps. She had said her people "didn't fuss." That meant she was left
to herself to pick up all these old wives' tales. "Really! Has anyone been caught?" She nodded, unsmiling. "Yes; old George Toms. He was one of Dad's tenants, a big purple-faced
man, who drank a lot and never took much exercise. They found him in a
ditch with his clothes all torn and covered with mud. He had been run to
death; there was no wound on his body, but his heart was broken." Her
thoughts recurred to the stone against which they leant, and his quaint
conceit. "You were rather rash to go offering burnt sacrifices about
here, don't you think? Dad says that stone is the remains of an old
Ph[oe]nician altar, too." She was smiling now, but the seriousness lingered in her eyes. "And I have probably invoked some terrible heathen deity--Ashtoreth, or
Pugm, or Baal! How awful!" he added, with mock gravity. The girl rose to her feet. "You are laughing at me. The people about here are superstitious, and I
am a Celt, too. I belong here." He jumped up with a quick protest. "No, I'm not laughing at you. Please don't think that! But it's a little
hard to believe in active evil when all around is so beautiful." He
helped her to mount and walked to the top of the mound at her stirrup. "Tell me, is there any charm or incantation, in case----?" His eyes were
twinkling, but she shook her fair head soberly. "They say iron--cold iron--is the only thing it cannot cross. But I must
go!" She held out her hand with half-shy friendliness. "Thank you for
your niceness to me." Her eyes grew suddenly wistful. "Really, though, I
don't think I should stay there if I were you. Please!" He only laughed, however, and she moved off, shaking her impatient
horse into a canter. Maynard stood looking after her till she was
swallowed by the dusk and surrounding moor. Then, thoughtfully, he
retraced his steps to the hollow. *       *       *       *       *

A cloud lay across the face of the moon when Fear awoke Maynard. He
rolled on to one elbow and stared round the hollow, filled with
inexplicable dread. He was ordinarily a courageous man, and had no
nerves to speak of; yet, as his eyes followed the line of the ridge
against the sky, he experienced terror, the elementary, nauseating
terror of childhood, when the skin tingles, and the heart beats at a
suffocating gallop. It was very dark, but momentarily his eyes grew
accustomed to it. He was conscious of a queer, pungent smell, horribly
animal and corrupt. Suddenly the utter silence broke. He heard a rattle of stones, the
splash of water about him, realised that it was the brook beneath his
feet, and that he, Maynard, was running for his life. Neither then nor later did Reason assert herself. He ran without
question or amazement. His brain--the part where human reasoning holds
normal sway--was dominated by the purely primitive instinct of flight. And in that sudden rout of courage and self-respect one conscious
thought alone remained. Whatever it was that was even then at his heels,
he must not see it. At all costs it must be behind him, and, resisting
the sudden terrified impulse to look over his shoulder, he unbuttoned
his tweed jacket and disengaged himself from it as he ran. The faint
haze that had gathered round the full moon dispersed, and he saw the
moor stretching before him, grey and still, glistening with dew. He was of frugal and temperate habits, a wiry man at the height of his
physical powers, with lean flanks and a deep chest. At Oxford they had said he was built to run for his life. He was running
for it now, and he knew it. The ground sloped upwards after a while, and he tore up the incline,
breathing deep and hard; down into a shallow valley, leaping gorse
bushes, crashing through whortle and meadowsweet, stumbling over
peat-cuttings and the workings of forgotten tin-mines. An idiotic
popular tune raced through his brain. He found himself trying to frame
the words, but they broke into incoherent prayers, still to the same
grotesque tune. Then, as he breasted the flank of a boulder-strewn tor, he seemed to
hear snuffling breathing behind him, and, redoubling his efforts,
stepped into a rabbit hole. He was up and running again in the twinkling
of an eye, limping from a twisted ankle as he ran. He sprinted over the crest of the hill and thought he heard the sound
almost abreast of him, away to the right. In the dry bed of a
watercourse some stones were dislodged and fell with a rattle in the
stillness of the night; he bore away to the left. A moment later there
was Something nearly at his left elbow, and he smelt again the nameless,
f[oe]tid reek. He doubled, and the ghastly truth flashed upon him. The
Thing was playing with him! He was being hunted for sport--the sport of
a horror unthinkable. The sweat ran down into his eyes. He lost all count of time; his wrist watch was smashed on his wrist. He
ran through a reeling eternity, sobbing for breath, stumbling, tripping,
fighting a leaden weariness; and ever the same unreasoning terror urged
him on. The moon and ragged skyline swam about him; the blood drummed
deafeningly in his ears, and his eyeballs felt as if they would burst
from their sockets. He had nearly bitten his swollen tongue in two
falling over an unseen peat-cutting, and blood-flecked foam gathered on
his lips. God, how he ran! But he was no longer among bog and heather. He was
running--shambling now--along a road. The loping pursuit of that
nameless, shapeless Something sounded like an echo in his head. He was nearing a village, but saw nothing save a red mist that swam
before him like a fog. The road underfoot seemed to rise and fall in
wavelike undulations.