We went down to the orchard, Hugh and I, determined to build a snow-house if the drifts were deep enough. We were not going to plunge into a drift, and make a sort of chamber by wrestling our bodies about, as the Indians do. We had planned to dig a square chamber in the biggest drift we could find, and then to roof it over with an old tarpaulin stretched upon sticks. We were going to cover the tarpaulin with snow, in the Indian fashion, and we had planned to make a little narrow passage, like a fox's earth, as the only doorway to the chamber.
It was a bright, frosty morning: the sun shone, the world sparkled, the sky was of a dazzling blue, the snow gleamed everywhere. Hoolie, the dog, was wild with excitement. He ran from drift to drift, snapping up mouthfuls of snow, and burrowing down sideways till he was half buried.
There was a flower garden at one end of the orchard, and in the middle of the garden there was a summer-house. The house was a large, airy single room (overlooking the stream), with a space beneath it, half-cave, half-cellar, open to the light, where Joe Barnicoat kept his gardening tools, with other odds-and-ends, such as bast, peasticks, sieves, shears, and traps for birds and vermin. Hugh and I went directly to this lower chamber to get a shovel for our work.
We stood at the entrance for a moment to watch Hoolie playing in the snow; and as we watched, something caught my eye and made me look up sharply.
Up above us, on the side of the combe beyond the lane, among a waste of gorse, in full view of the house (and of the orchard where we were), there was a mound or barrow, the burial-place of an ancient British king. It was a beautifully-rounded hill, some twenty-five feet high. A year or two before I went there it had been opened by the vicar, who found inside it a narrow stone passage, leading to an inner chamber, walled with unmortared stone. In the central chamber there were broken pots, a few bronze spear-heads, very green and brittle, and a mass of burnt bones. The doctor said that they were the bones of horses. On the top of all this litter, with his head between his knees, there sat a huge skeleton. The vicar said that when alive the man must have been fully six feet six inches tall, and large in proportion, for the bones were thick and heavy. He had evidently been a king: he wore a soft gold circlet round his head, and three golden bangles on his arms. He had been killed in battle. In the side of his skull just above the circle of gold, there was a great wound, with a flint axe-blade firmly wedged in the bone. The vicar had often told me about this skeleton. I remember to this day the shock of horror which came upon me when I heard of this great dead king, sitting in the dark among his broken goods, staring out over the valley. The country people always said that the hill was a fairy hill. They believed that the pixies went to dance there whenever the moon was full. I never saw the pixies myself, but somehow I always felt that the hill was uncanny. I never passed it at night if I could avoid it.
Now, when I looked up, as I stood with Hugh watching the dog, I saw something flash upon the top of the barrow. In that bright sun, with all the snow about, many things were sparkling; but this thing gleamed like lightning, suddenly, and then flashed again. Looking at it sharply, I saw that there was a man upon the barrow top, apparently lying down upon the snow. He had something in his hand turned to the sun, a piece of glass perhaps, or a tin plate, some very bright thing, which flashed. He flashed it three times quickly, then paused, then flashed it again. He seemed to be looking intently across the valley to the top of the combe beyond, to the very place where the road from Salcombe swings round to the dip. Looking in that direction, I saw the figure of a man standing on the top of the wall against a stunted holly-tree at the curve of the road. I had to look intently to see him at all, for he was in dark clothes, which shaded off unnoticed against the leaves of the holly. I saw him jump down now and again, and disappear round the curve of the road as though to look for something. Then he would run back and flash some bright thing once, as though in answer to the man on the barrow. It seemed to me very curious. I nudged Hugh's arm, and slipped into the shelter of the cave. For a few moments we watched the signaller. Then, suddenly, the watcher at the road-bend came running back from his little tour up the road, waving his arms, and flashing his bright plate as he ran. We saw him spring to his old place on the wall, and jump from his perch into the ditch. He had some shelter there, for we could see his head peeping out above the snow like an apple among straw. We were so busy watching the head among the snow that we did not notice the man upon the barrow. Something made us glance towards him, and, to our surprise and terror, we saw him running across the orchard more than half-way towards us. In spite of the snow he ran swiftly. We were frightened, for he was evidently coming towards us. He saw that we saw him, and lifted one arm and swung it downwards violently, as though to bid us lie down.
I glanced at Hugh and he at me, and that was enough. We turned at once, horribly scared, and ran as fast as we could along the narrow garden path, then over the wall, stumbling in our fright, into the wood. We did not know why we ran nor where we were going. We only felt that this strange man was after us, coming in great bounds to catch us. We were too frightened to run well; even had there been no snow upon the ground we could not have run our best. We were like rabbits pursued by a stoat, we seemed to have lost all power in our legs.
We had a good start. Perhaps without that fear upon us we might have reached the house, but as it was we felt as one feels in a nightmare, unable to run though in an agony of terror. Getting over the wall was the worst, for there Hugh stumbled badly, and I had to turn and help him, watching the man bounding ever nearer, signing to us to stay for him. A minute later, as we slipped and stumbled through the scrub of the wood, we heard him close behind us, crying to us in a smothered voice to stop. We ran on, terrified; and then Hugh's foot caught in a briar, so that he fell headlong with a little cry.
I turned at once to help him up, feeling like the doe rabbit, which turns (they say) against a weasel, to defend its young ones. It sounds brave of me, but it was not: I was scared almost out of my wits.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HUT IN THE GORSE-BUSHES
The man was on us in three strides, with his hand on our collars, frightening us out of any power to struggle. "You young fools," he said, not unkindly. "Why couldn't you stop when I waved to you?"
We did not answer, nor did he seem to expect us to answer. He just swung us round with our faces from the house, and hurried us, at a smart run, down the road. "Don't you stir a muscle," he added as he ran. "I'm not going to eat you, unless you drive me to it."