“I don't see what's uncanny no more than my father does. I know how hard he works, and he's done a good job rearing his animals, that's all. He's the best farmer round Cottersall by a long chalk.”
“Oh, certainly. He's a wonderful man. But he didn't put seven or eight eggs into a hedge sparrow's nest, did he? He didn't fill the pond with tadpoles and newts till it looks like a broth, did he? Something strange is happening on your farm this year, Nancy, and I want to protect you if I can.”
The earnestness with which he spoke, coupled perhaps with his proximity and the ardent way he pressed her hand, went a good way towards mollifying Nancy.
“Dear Gregory, you don't know anything about farm life, I don't reckon, for all your books. But you're very sweet to be concerned.”
“I shall always be concerned about you, Nancy, you beautiful creature.”
“You'll make me blush!”
“Please do, for then you look even lovelier than usual!” He put an arm around her. When she looked up at him, he caught her up close to his chest and kissed her fervently.
She gasped and broke away, but not with too great haste.
“Oh, Gregory! Oh, Gregory! I must go to Mother now!”
“Another kiss first! I can't let you go until I get another.”
He took it, and stood by the door trembling with excitement as she left. “Come and see us again soon,” she whispered.
“With dearest pleasure,” he said. But the next visit held more dread than pleasure.
The big cart was standing in the yard full of squealing piglets when Gregory arrived. The farmer and Neckland were bustling about it. The former greeted Gregory cheerfully.
“I've a chance to make a good quick profit on these little chaps. Old sows can't feed them, but sucking pig fetches its price in Norwich, so Bert and me are going to drive over to Heigham and put them on the train.”
“They've grown since I last saw them!”
“Ah, they put on over two pounds a day. Bert, we'd better get a net and spread over this lot, or they'll be diving out. They're that lively!”
The two men made their way over to the barn, clomping through the mud. Mud squelched behind Gregory. He turned.
In the muck between the stables and the cart, footprints ap– peared, two parallel tracks. They seemed to imprint themselves with no agency but their own. A cold flow of acute super– natural terror overcame Gregory, so that he could not move. The scene seemed to go gray and palsied as he watched the tracks come towards him.
The carthorse neighed uneasily, the prints reached the cart, the cart creaked, as if something had climbed aboard. The piglets squealed with terror. One dived clear over the wooden sides. Then aterrible silence fell.
Gregory still could not move. He heard an unaccountable sucking noise in the cart, but his eyes remained rooted on the muddy tracks. Those impressions were of something other than a man: something with dragging feet that were in outline something like a seal's flippers. Suddenly he found his voice. “Mr. Grendon!” he cried.
Only as the farmer and Bert came running from the barn with the net did Gregory dare look into the cart.
One last piglet, even as he looked, seemed to be deflating rapidly, like a rubber balloon collapsing. It went limp and lay silent a,mong the other little empty bags of pig skin. The cart creaked. Something splashed heavily off across the farmyard in the direction of the pond.
Grendon did not see. He had run to the cart and was staring like Gregory in dismay at the deflated corpses. Neckland stared too, and was the first to find his voice.
“Some sort of disease got 'em all, just like that! Must be one of them there new diseases from the Continent of Europe!”
“It's no disease,” Gregory said. He could hardly speak, for his mind had just registered the fact that there were no bones left in or amid the deflated pig bodies. “It's no diseaselook, the pig that got away is still alive.”
He pointed to the animal that had jumped from the cart. It had injured its leg in the process, and now lay in the ditch some feet away, panting. The farmer went over to it and lifted it out.
“It escaped the disease by jumping out,” Neckland said. “Master, we better go and see how the rest of them is down in the sties.”
“Ah, that we had,” Grendon said. He handed the pig over to Gregory, his face set. “No good taking one alone to market. 111 get Grubby to unharness the horse. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd be good enough to take this little chap in to Marjorie. At least we can all eat a bit of roast pig for dinner tomorrow.”
“Mr. Grendon, this is no disease. Have the veterinarian over from Heigham and let him examine these bodies.”
“Don't you tell me how to run my farm, young man. I've got trouble enough.”
Despite this rebuff, Gregory could not keep away. He had to see Nancy, and he had to see what occurred at the farm. The morning after the horrible thing happened to the pigs, he received a letter from his most admired correspondent, Mr. H. G. Wells, one paragraph of which read: "At bottom, I think I am neither optimist nor pessimist. I tend to believe both that we stand on the threshold of an epoch of magnificent progresscertainly such an epoch is within our graspand that we may have reached the 'fin du globe' prophesied by our gloomier fin de siecle prophets. I am not at all surprised to hear that such a vast issue may be resolving itself on a remote farm near Cottersall, Norfolkall unknown to anyone but the two of us. Do not think that I am in other than a state of terror, even when I cannot help exclaiming "What a lark!' "
Too preoccupied to be as excited over such a letter as he would ordinarily have been, Gregory tucked it away in his jacket pocket and went to saddle up Daisy.
Before lunch, he stole a kiss from Nancy, and planted another on her over-heated left cheek as she stood by the vast range in the kitchen. Apart from that, there was little pleasure in the day. Grendon was reassured to find that none of the other piglets had fallen ill of the strange shrinking disease, but he remained alert against the possibility of it striking again. Meanwhile, another miracle had occurred. In the lower pasture, in a tumbledown shed, he had a cow that had given birth to four calves during the night. He did not expect the animal to live, but the calves were well enough, and being fed from a bottle by Nancy.
The farmer's face was dull, for he had been up all night with the laboring cow, and he sat down thankfully at the head of the table as the roast pig arrived on its platter.
It proved uneatable. In no time, they were all flinging down their implements in disgust. The flesh had a bitter taste for which Neckland was the first to account.
“It's diseased!” he growled. “This here animal had the dis– ease all the time. We didn't ought to eat this here meat or we may all be dead ourselves inside of a week.”
They were forced to make a snack on cold salted beef and cheese and pickled onions, none of which Mrs. Grendon could face in her condition. She retreated upstairs in tears at the thought of the failure of her carefully prepared dish, and Nancy ran after her to comfort her.
After the dismal meal, Gregory spoke to Grendon.
“I have decided I must go to Norwich tomorrow for a few days, Mr. Grendon,” he said. “You are in trouble here, I believe. Is there anything, any business I can transact for you in the city? Can I find you a veterinary surgeon there?”
Grendon clapped his shoulder. “I know you mean well, and I thank 'ee for it, but you don't seem to realize that vetinaries cost a load of money and aren't always too helpful when they do come.”
“Then let me do something for you, Joseph, in return for all your kindness to me. Let me bring a vet back from Norwich at my own expense, just to have a look round, nothing more.” “Blow me if you aren't stubborn as they come. I'm telling you, same as my dad used to say, if I finds any person on my land -I didn't ask here. I'm getting that there shotgun of mine down and I'm peppering him with buckshot, same as I did with them two old tramps last year. Fair enough?”