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"At that place, the moor rises sharply, so it's quite a climb—too much for an old thing like me, but ideal for a boy like Samuel, just getting his muscles and proud of them. So when he looked up, the moor was over him, and outlined against the moonlit sky he saw a figure of hellish terror. At first he thought it a pony, it was so big, but then he saw how its tail raised up, and then he saw the light coming from the middle of its great, dark head.

"It was a dog, my dear, a dog such as hasn't been seen since Mr Holmes settled the Baskerville problem, a dog to bring a young boy nightmares and keep him locked inside when the sun is down.

"He ran, did Samuel, leaving his boots, his satchel, and his scone there by the river.

"Daniel never even considered that it might be his son's idea of a clever joke—one look at the state of the lad's feet and a person could tell that.

"Daniel wanted to take up his shotgun and go right back out, even if it meant carrying Samuel on his back, but the thought of going out into the night scared that brave little boy rigid. The next morning Daniel talked him into putting on a pair of old bedroom slippers and going back to the place by the river. The boy's boots and stockings were on the rock, right where he'd left them, but the scone was gone and the stone where Samuel had dropped it was licked clean, and the satchel he used for carrying his mother's cooking up to Bridestowe they found some distance off, torn to shreds.

"And a dog's footprints. Plenty of those, oh my, yes. Now, would you like to have another cup of tea before you hear about my little hedgehog?" the old woman asked brightly.

"Just a moment," I said, thinking furiously and trying hard to assimilate this abrupt development, the fleshing out of a hound of ghostly rumours into a thing of flesh and bone, interested in the consumption of sweet scones. "This was towards the end of August, around the full moon, and on a Saturday night?"

"That's right, dear."

Which put it the twenty-fifth of August, the day before the full moon and the day after the courting couple had seen the dog with the carriage.

"And neither of them said anything about it?"

"Daniel loves his son. The boy shakes whenever anyone brings it up, so Daniel thought it best not to tell anyone. I only found out because I asked him what was wrong with the boy."

"How old is Samuel?"

"Twelve, dear. A good, responsible age. Now I'll tell you about my Tiggy, shall I?"

I rubbed my brow, feeling a bit stunned, but said weakly, "Do, please."

"I was crossing the moor one day, back in the middle of summer," she began.

"Do you know the date?" I interrupted, although by that time I knew enough to expect the answer I received.

"No my love, I'm sorry, but I haven't much need any longer for numbers on a page. I can tell you," she continued, forestalling the second part of the question, "that it was in July, and near enough the full moon as makes no difference, and it was a Saturday too, because I went to church services with my friend in Widdecombe the next day." Even if she had been a schoolteacher, her answer was typical of those I had become accustomed to receiving, and in the end more precise than the answer of a calendar-user to whom days were easily forgotten dates instead of skies and seasons. She was describing the twenty-eighth of July, three days after Johnny Trelawny, and one day after the ramblers from London, had each seen Lady Howard's coach. I set my cup down on the bench and prepared to listen closely.

"I often go across the moor, you know. I have friends in Moretonhampstead and Widdecombe, and there's roots and things growing on that side and not this. So on a nice day when I don't have too many animals needing my eye—my 'patients,' as Daniel calls them—I'll take a sandwich and a bottle of tea and pay a call on my friends."

Both of the places she had named were a good fifteen or twenty miles across some fairly rough countryside. "Do you do the trip in a day?" I asked in surprise. Having seen her totter about, I doubted that she could cover more than two miles in an hour, and that on even ground.

"Oh, I stop the night there, dear," she reassured me. "Sometimes two nights, and come back the third day. One of Daniel's children feeds the beasties." As if that was all that might concern me. "But as I was saying, I was on the moor one day last summer when I heard the saddest little cry, it'd make your heart break to hear it. It was such a tiny noise, I had a time finding what was making it, until finally I found the poor wee thing in the shade of a standing stone. It'd been trying to dig a hole in the ground to hide itself in, but it hadn't a chance, even if it had been whole and strong." She seemed not far from tears at the pathos of the thing.

"A hedgehog," I said.

"That it was, a young Tiggy, would fit into your hand. I thought for sure it would die, it was that sorely treated, I decided all I could do was make it comfortable and sing to it until it passed on. So I popped it into my coat pocket and sang while I walked, and I took it out when Igot to Widdecombe, fully expecting to have to borrow a spade and bury it.

"Only, don't you know, the little face looked up at me, so trusting, I just knew it would pull through. We gave it some milk with a drop of brandy in it, set its little leg—the back one, on the left—and wrapped it with a splint made from a nice smooth corset stay cut down to size, and I pulled together the great tear in its back with a piece of silk embroidery floss—green, it was; quite striking—and put it into a little box with some cotton wool near the fire.

"And in the morning it wrinkled its little nose at me, asking clear as it could, 'Where's my breakfast?' "

"Was it all right, then?" I asked. Not perhaps the most professional of investigative enquiries, and certainly not the question Holmes would have had at that point, but I did want to know.

"Not very good, you understand, but it lived. I did have to take off its little foot with a pair of sewing scissors, I'm afraid. It was too badly crushed to save, and the infection would have killed it."

I winced at the picture of two ancient ladies bent over the kitchen table doing an amputation with a pair of scissors, and moved quickly on to the proper questions. "What had caused its injuries, do you know?"

"Now that's just it, dear," she said, sounding approving. "It was something moving fast—a cart-wheel, maybe, or a boot—that squashed the poor thing's leg, but a dog had at it, too."

The hair on the back of my neck stirred. "How do you know that?" I demanded.

"Which, the cart or the dog?"

"Both."

"Well, dear, I know that whatever it was squashed Tiggy had to be moving quickly, because if poor little Tiggy'd had a minute's warning he'd have curled up tight and been flattened right across, not just one stray leg. And the dog I know because any wild creature would've had more sense, and once tearing at Tiggy that way he'd either have stayed to finish him off or taken him home to feed his babies."

Unlikely as it seemed, this was a witness after Holmes' own heart, and I took my hat off to her. Literally.

"What pretty hair you have, my dear," she exclaimed, and reached out to pat it lightly. "I had a cousin once who had strawberry blonde hair just like yours, and she was bright as her hair, too."

I had to admit that I was not feeling particularly bright, and asked her if she had seen any hoof marks or cart tracks.

"I'm afraid I didn't, dear. The ground was dry, you know, and it takes something pretty heavy to make a dent."

I found it hard to imagine the turf of the moor dry and hard, but I had to defer to her greater knowledge of the place. I then asked her about the precise location of the hedgehog's unfortunate accident. I offered her my map, but she waved it away, saying that her eyes found such fine work a difficulty, so instead she described her route subjectively—the hills and flats, a tor gone by, a stream crossed, the morning sun in her eyes—and I eventually decided on a stone circle below a rise that seemed to coincide with her description. I folded up the map and replaced it in the breast pocket of my coat. She seemed not to have finished with me, however, and sat with her head at an angle and an expectant look on her face. I thought perhaps she was waiting for my final judgement, which I did not think I could give her.