In the strong twilight over the Mountains of Wales, draining of light League upon League of darkly forested Peaks...to the eye familiar, the occasional interruption of a Cabin or Plantation...chimney Smoke, a gray patch of girdl'd Trees amid the green pervading...a Shade ascend?ing one hollow at a time, the wind acquires at the Dark a potency it did not possess in the light. An ax-bit's blow quench'd in living wood. A dog after a Squirrel. A percussive "Sandwich" of hammer, anvil, and the Work between. Night over all this watershed how vast, that covers each soul in it like a breathing Mouth, humid, warm, carrying the odors of liv?ing and dying, that takes back ev'rything committed upon the Land that Day, without appeal, dissolving all in Shadow.
They have caught up with this era in the settlement of this West. Though not in all ways insane, yet Capt. Shelby, avid for any occasion to quarrel, exhibits signs of mania upon the topic of Land-Disputes, being often preoccupied from well before sun-up till far into the early Dark?nesses with litigations great and petty, engrossments Ditto, with Bound?ary issues a particular Passion,— a fallen Tree, a wand'ring Chicken, the meanders of a Stream, any pretext, any least scent of Inconvenience, will do. He admires this West Line for its great Size, tho' he's puzzl'd as to why there can't be a few angles someplace, to accommodate a close friend, for example,— or even more than one.
"Kings," Mason with a what-can-we-poor-Sheep-do look, which Shelby declines to join him in. "This is how they reason, in Map-siz'd sweeps of the Arm. 'Divide it thus, I command you!' They can't be both-er'd with the fine details."
"Having ink'd a Map or two, I know that impatience, tho' my Sympa?thy reaches no further. Out here the King has few to count upon, and his troops will be fools, to come much past Cumberland,— you be certain to tell 'em I said so."
"Tell whom?"
"Whoever may be asking."
"Do tha believe we're Spies, Captain...?" Dixon, with genial Tap-Room Menace, moving as if into Range.
"Sirs. I've been out here since before the late War, and have offer'd my Hospitality to many a Spy, of ev'ry persuasion, for, as Spies must travel, so, it follows, some Travelers must be Spies,— yet I bar my Door to no one. 'Tis a Pursuit of men, away in the distant World, no more sinful than the making of Rifles, or the charging of Quit-Rent, yet do I prefer an honest Quarrel out in the open, myself, 'tis more manly somehow, don't ye think?"
Dixon ambles closer, beaming. "Yet 'tis a gormless Spy indeed, who'd lurk where there are no more Secrets to steal."
"How so?"
"What is there that has not been visited, intentionally and not, an hundred times? Gathering Ginseng would be more profitable."
Shelby is of course also a Surveyor, who ranges these Mountains all about, bearing and wielding his Instrument like a Weapon. "Oh, I saw 'pon the Instant how this was," darkly to Dixon, "I saw how the ancient Sorcerers must have enjoy'd what they did. At our Pleasure, we may look thro' this brazen Tube, thro' Glass mathematickally shap'd, and whatever desirable Scene sweeps by as we turn it,— why 'tis ours for writing down the Angle! Good Heavens, what Power!"
There is a love of complexity, here in America, Shelby declares,— pure Space waits the Surveyor,— no previous Lines, no fences, no streets to constrain polygony however extravagant,— especially in Maryland, where, encourag'd by the Re-survey Laws, warranted properties may pos?sess hundreds of sides,— their angles pushing outward and inward,— all Sides zigging and zagging, going ahead and doubling back, making Loops inside Loops,— in America, 'twas ever, Poh! to Simple Quadrilaterals.
"Eeh," Dixon nodding vaguely. He's never regarded his Occupation in quite this way before. His journeyman years coincided with the rage then sweeping Durham for Enclosure,— aye and alas, he had attended at that Altar. He had slic'd into Polygons the Common-Lands of his Forebears. He had drawn Lines of Ink that became Fences of Stone. He had broken up herds of Fell sheep, to be driven ragged and dingy off thro' the Rain, to Gates, and exile. He had turn'd the same covetous Angles as the Welshman,— tho' perhaps never as many, for Shelby seem'd seiz'd with Goniolatry, or the Worship of Angles, defining tracts of virgin Land by as many of these exhilarating Instrumental Sweeps, as possible.
"Thing's to survey your Domain. Even if you don't own it. Here at the Allegheny Crest, ye may stand and look either way, down mile after mile of the Visto ye've cut, and from your Eminence pretend that you own it. Ev'ry Girl, ev'ry Gambler, Tonick Salesman, and Banjo Player that comes down that Line, could easily be paying Tribute to somebody. Not a lot,— no worse than Quitrent,— a Nuisance-Levy really, even if it's a song or a Card-trick or ten minutes in the Hay-Loft."
Shelby accompanies them over North Mountain, whereupon it begins to rain and snow, and continues so for the next ten days. The Cards come out, and the Chap-books and Dice and Bottles. Mason goes to sleep, requesting that he be waken'd only in case of Spring. Dixon tries to learn from Capt. Zhang something of the Luo-Pan, in exchange for Instruction as to the Sector. "The Attention we are paying these Zenith-Stars," he suggests, "has brought me to imagine an Anti-celestial, or backwards Astrology, in which the Stars must be...projected inward, somehow...? mapp'd from the Celestial Sphere onto the Surface of our Globe...? At Greenwich, for example, the Zenith-Star is Gamma Draconis, putting Britain into the Terrestrial Sign of Draco, the Dragon."
"Just so!" The Geomancer twinkles.
- Yet in Durham We mean something different when we say 'Dragon.' Ours are not at all the Chinese Variety. Some, like the Lambton Worm, lacking Wings and a fire-breathing Capacity, may indeed be of a distinct Species."
"You've seen such a Creature?"
"Heard the story, when growing up. As Lambton Castle lies almost upon the North Sea, we at Cockfield knew it as a Wear Valley tale, that like an ageless Salmon had work'd its way over the years upstream to us....At the Market Square in Bishop, as at Darlington Fair, the Tale was often perform'd by troupes of traveling Actors, six of whom would be needed for the part of the Worm. The Drop was painted to suggest the Sea-Fret whispering along the walls, mysterious shapes in the Park beyond, as Romantick as you please. Today the country 'round Lambton is thick with collieries, and pretty much given over to staithes and shoots and waggon-rails,— but the river then was purer and wilder, not yet alto?gether converted to the service of the Christian God,— tho', as it hap-pen'd, fishing in it on Sunday, in these parts, had long been forbidden." They take out Pipes, which Capt. Zhang fills with a Blend of cur'd Vege?tation that he will describe only as "Chinese Tobacco,"— courteously igniting both, with Embers from the Fire.
"The heedless John Lambton, his Lordship's heir, a young man as malapert in company as he was masterly in a stream,— his own reach of the Wear in particular,— has long refus'd to honor this rule. One Sun?day, instead of the salmon-trout he believes his due, he pulls in a small snakelike thing, with a double row of horrid little Vents either side of it, from its head down the body, gasping open and shut,— nine pair of them. At first he takes it for a Lamprey,— but Lampreys have only seven pair. This thing is different. He feels a strange cold at his tem?ples,— a conscious vibration in the fishing-line. It seems to him almost that the creature is gazing into his eyes, with a look of intelligent Evil...."
Just then his friend Reginald comes galloping up, with a couple of pack-horses. "All right then John, come along, there'll be no Moors left by the time we get to Jerusalem."
"What?"
"The Crusade...? Oh, bother, you said you'd come. I say what's that on your line? Ghastly thing. Throw it back in, let's go bash old Abdul, whatwhat?"
"Yes but Reggie I'm not sure the River's quite the place for it, best interests of the fish and so on. Here, look ye, here's this hole, with some stones 'round the edge, I'll just chuck it in here, shall I."
"But,— isn't it someone's Well?”
 
"Some tenant or something, who cares?" and with one of those knightly flourishes, the young fool, damn'd in the instant, actually tosses the Worm into the Well.
"Oh, John," cries Reggie, "that's so amusing!" And thus cheerily, the lads are off to the East, where a number of desperate Adventures wait them.
Meanwhile the Worm is far from idle, having almost immediately begun, in that Womb of wet stone, to grow,— local people hear it thrash?ing about, and the bravest, as they peer down into the echoing dark, may almost see it. Soon, the water has acquir'd an unpleasant taste, metallic, sour, heavy with a reptilian Musk. Buckets let down do not come back up, creaking noises are heard at night as the well's Casing is brought under some enormous Force,— till one morning, as the Sun rises, so up over the Rim of the Well, appears a great blazing pair of Eyes, the closely set, purposeful eyes of a Predator. Slowly, with no appearance of effort, it begins to ascend from the Well, accompanied by a terrible, poisonous odor,— flowing up over the edge...indeed, it keeps coming for longer than it should. Everything living in the area, including the vegetation, stop what they're doing, and attend. The Worm seems quite hungry.
Taking its time, the Worm proceeds to one of the Batts or Islands in the River, where it sets up its base of operations. Its needs are simple,— Food, drink, and the pleasure to be had from killing. It eats sheep and swine, it drains milk from cattle nine at a time,— the number nine recurs in the Tale, tho' the reason is dark,— and careless dogs, cats, and humans are but light snacks to it. Around it, a circle of Devastation appears, pale and soil'd, which no one enters, and which the World must keep shifting for, a little at a time, as it goes on widening,— the Worm each day venturing a little further from its base, till at length the circle of terror advances to include a direct view of the Battlements of Lambton Castle itself, the final sanctuary, surely inviolable,— although the peo?ple in the Castle dare not try to organize an exodus, for the Worm when it must can travel at great speed, faster than horses can gallop,— they have watch'd in terror many Chases to the death across the Tide-Plain below, as, once alerted, the Worm has easily cut its Victims off in the open, far from any refuge or escape.
So there begins an Obsession by the Worm,— The Chapel is never empty now, the Steward has begun taking inventory, rationing lists are in early but serious negotiation. Days once idle are now fill'd with defen?sive chores. Engineers try to get the Trebuchet on the roof into working order, tweaking the shape of the Sling-Release Hook— The Worm is by now grown so large that it may comfortably coil 'round the entire Castle. One day, there will come to it some Sign,— the call of a Raven, the exact shape of a Moon, the racing shadow of a cloud,— which will lead, by an unreadable train of Serpent thought, to a convulsive breaching of these walls and a merciless search within, a Face suddenly looming in the roofless Sky, a Feast. No one can say when. The Evil One has Lambton Castle literally in Its Embrace. The local folk keep a vigil, blending in against the brush on the somber hillsides, calculating how fast they'll have to move when the creature turns its attention to them. Days pass,— presently, weeks. The Worm continues to enlarge its Zone of emptiness, but with a change of Center,— returning now after each excursion to coil about the Castle, where it lies all night digesting loudly its day's preda-tion. It is into this increasingly desperate Siege, that John Lambton now returns from his Crusade.
At first look, impaling foreigners seems to have agreed with him,— he is tann'd and fit and easy in the Saddle. But beneath the hearty Mask lies a Dread of what he will encounter. Approaching the Castle, he can smell the Worm long before he sees it. He would have much preferr'd a Dragon, Dragons having from time to time, in County Durham, chosen to infest the roads and lay desolate the countryside,— it falling, usually, to such known antidraconical families as the Latimers, Wyvils, or Mow-brays, to respond. But those creatures were winged and claw'd, fire-breathing, noble in conformation, the reptilian detailing ever harmless, almost an afterthought. Nothing like what John Lambton, rounding the last bend before home, beholds, recognizes, and understands as his own creation, something he must now before God deal with.
Time has not been kind to the Worm he threw in the well. It had been unpleasant enough to look at when only elver size,— now, despite what he has seen in the East, he must labor not to turn away. The eighteen vents have grown astonishingly, and hang, pulsating, each surrounded by a deep black annulus of something glist'ring and corroded. The Face
has lost the youthful malevolence that Lambton remembers,— has rather become, deep in its abandonment, now purely a Weapon in the service of blood-lust, a serpent's gift for paralyzing its prey with a certain Gaze that the potential Luncheon, once returning it, is helpless to defy. Even Lambton, though............