Our house must be in the path of some air current shot down between the hills, for I chanced to look out the window while the panes were rattling, and the fir trees on the hilltop were perfectly quiet.
Frank has been very restless all day. Twice he left the work to go to the village, coming back each time with disappointment written large in his face. I suppose he has been expecting a letter from the Frasanet girl.
IT IS really most extraordinary, the way the wind seems to have singled out our cottage for its pranks. Just before dawn I was awakened by the rattling of the casement. It shook and quivered till I thought someone was trying to force an entrance. Neither Carew nor Frank seemed disturbed by the noise, so I got up to investigate. Immediately I turned my flashlight on the window, the rattling ceased. The minute I left the window, the clatter recommenced; when I stood at the casement several minutes, the noise began at the back door. I hurried through the barren little kitchen, and heard it at the front of the house.
For several minutes I played a sort of crazy blind man's buff; finally I cursed myself for a fool and crawled back to bed. But the wind’s sharp, furious stabs persisted some time, knocking at windows and doors, whining and whistling about the eaves and chimneys, and buffeting the walls. Almost as abruptly as it commenced, the racket ceased, and the absolute silence of the pre-dawn settled over the house.
Old Mrs. Jones was laying the tea things when I came in a few minutes before the others this afternoon.
"Be ye goin' to-stop yer diggin' soon?" she asked, swathing the earthen pot in a tea-cozy.
"No," I answered, "we've just commenced."
"Ye'll not be diggin' by th' quarry, though?" she pursued. "Not much deeper?"
She avoided looking at me; but there was an almost feverish anxiety in her words.
"We haven't found much there," I conceded, "We'll try somewhere else if the luck doesn't turn in a few days."
The old woman busied herself with the toast and marmalade a moment, then, abruptly, "Did ye hear th' dargs last night?"
"Dogs?" I queried. "No; how do you mean?"
"Oh," she evaded, "they was howling at someat as was runnin' through the hills. Th' wind, p'aps."
"I certainly heard the wind," I assured her. "It raced round the house for an hour or more last night. Is it a habit of Welsh dogs to bark at the wind?"
"'Tis a habit of all dargs to bay th' wind when there's evil in it," she answered seriously. "Sixty-five years, girl an' woman, I've lived in these parts, an' there's always trouble come to them as dug in th' hills. I'm not sayin' it's true; but me faither used to tell of a bogle his faither had seen beside that heathen grave on th' big mound. 'Tis some as says th' old dead warn't buried deep enough, and they walks at night when their graves is scratched; an' some says it's a bogle that watches beside th' quarry; but none round here would strike a pick in th' hills for love nor gold. When our dargs howls, we knows there's things abroad."
"You think the dogs can see what you can't, then?" I asked, amused at her earnestness.
"Aye," she answered simply, "th' darg sees what mortals' eyes can't, because there's no soul in him."
I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my pipe, bringing out a small, hard object along with the briar. It was one of the bits of blue stone we'd dug
