It is with some misgiving that I venture to insert this tale, inasmuch as the telling involves mention of a place so weird that readers strange to the Land’s End district may be incredulous of its existence.

For to this day an evil repute clings to Cairn Kenidzhek amongst those best fit to judge its character—to wit, the few dwellers round the base of the rugged hill on which it frowns. Within half a mile or so of it, there are three small farmhouses, counting the one on the lower moor by the quaking bog where Jim Trevaskis used to live, and from the occupants, if you first win their confidence and are betrayed by no “furrin” accent, you may learn some of the strange occurrences that take place about it.

With bated breath they will tell you that on pitch-dark nights the pile of rocks is at times lit up with an unearthly light, and that now and then, especially when trouble is brooding and the death-watch has been ticking in the “spence,” they hear, as they lie awake, the stony hill ring under the stroke of galloping hoofs. Whether these and other eerie happenings, around which legends have shaped themselves, can be explained on scientific grounds, matters not to them, for the Celt of the countryside turns a deaf ear to new-fangled notions and clings to the traditions of his fathers. But of all the haunting memories of the Cairn, that which inspires the greatest dread is associated with the disappearance of two men who were last seen toiling up the hill at the close of a wild winter’s day. No legend is this coming down from a remote past; for Dick Shellal, Trevaskis’ farmhand, who could count up to forty with the help of his fingers, had heard his great-grandfather say that the mystery was talked about when he was a boy as if it were a thing of yesterday.

On the December night when our tale opens, Trevaskis himself, as was his wont in stormy weather, bedded up the cattle early, piled the furze on the fire though the wind was westerly, and—a thing he would never have done by day—permitted Shellal, who scamped the job in his hurry to get indoors, to put the wheel of an old donkey cart on the “riffled” thatch of the pig’s “crow.” Hours later, when his master had at length fallen asleep, and Shellal could hear him snoring through the “planchen,” he himself lay wide awake on his straw pallet listening to the moaning of the wind, and, tempted during a temporary lull to gratify his curiosity and see whether anything was abroad, sat up in bed and peeped through the corner pane of the attic window. Angry clouds coursed across the face of the moon, and the sky was nearly as dark as the earth; but whilst he looked there was a rift in the black veil, and against the silver disc he got a glimpse of the jagged crest of the Cairn. Lowering his gaze at the sight of it, he followed the vague outline of the murky cone of the hill, and then with the quickness of thought, buried his shock head under the bedclothes. Coward! Let him lie there with chattering teeth, and with knees doubled up to his chin. The light that scared him, though it is so near the edge of the bog, is no pixie’s light, no lantern held by shadowy hands; the feeble rays he saw, flicker on the path of as human a being as ever trod the earth. He should have known who it was, for there is but one man whose lonesome duty could bring him there in the small hours of the morning, when the watch-dog sleeps, and the fox is tyrant of the farmyard. Yes, it is Andrew who threads his way in and out amongst the rush-clumps near the lip of the treacherous quagmire. But what is he doing there? Why has he not taken to the rising ground at his usual point, a furlong back, where the herbage is scant, and scarce hides the stony surface? Surely he must have missed his way, or he would not be following the widely circuitous base to reach the fox-earth in the valley on the far side of the Cairn.

Cairn Kenidzhek.             

It is not so. No, given to taking short cuts though he is, he prefers on this night to keep on the rim of the haunted slopes, and as near the bog as foothold will allow. Level-headed as he is in most things, the taint of superstition is in his blood too, and it is fear, excited by the story he heard two hours ago, that dictates the path he follows. Dropping in at the “Jolly Tinners” at Trewellard for a glass of beer before starting on his round, he found himself an involuntary listener to what he would rather have missed. On pushing open the door, he was surprised to find some half a dozen miners in the bar, and wondered at the cause of their silence. They were seated on a form in front of a fire, but their attention was apparently taken by an aged miner, for their heads were turned his way. Andrew, who feared there had been loss of life in the mine, stole into a seat opposite the old man, who, to his dismay, related the story of the two men lost upon Cairn Kenidjack, for so he called it. Thrilling was every word he said, even when dealing with the well-known facts—the sighting of the strange sail, the landing at the Cove, the path taken by the men across the moor, their conversation with the miners near the Cross, the spot near the Cairn where they were last seen in the gathering gloom, the lurid light that lit up the rocks, the finding of the broken claymore. But when with trembling voice he threw out dark hints of what most likely befell the missing men at nightfall, a deathlike silence fell on his rugged listeners, and so unnerved was the Earthstopper that he started at the creaking of the signboard, and shrunk from the thought of the journey before him. The tale ended, Andrew would have called for a quart of strong ale, but that he was short of cash and would not ask the landlord to put his name on the slate, “no tick” being the custom in the parish of Pendeen. Yet, for the sake of the company and the brightness of the room he stayed on and, not knowing the gossip of the mining village, strove, but in vain, to change the current of his thoughts by putting questions about the “bal” and even about the ponies in the submarine level, which extends more than a mile under the sea. At turning-out time, he put the cat that had fallen asleep on his knees gently on the floor, and lit the lantern. Leaving the inn, he went up the road with one of the miners who lived on the edge of the moorland, and when the wind slammed Jan Jose’s door behind him, Andrew, oppressed with a feeling of loneliness he seldom experienced, left the track and set out across the gale-swept waste leading to Kenidzhek, with uncle Zackey’s version of the mystery vivid in his brain. On the way he stopped two fox-earths, his tramp till then being void of incidents, save for the startled cry of a snipe that sprung from his feet near the edge of a marsh, and the scream of an owl that glided past him where, to avoid some waste heaps, he swung round by a mine-ruin. He had not, however, proceeded three furlongs from the spot where Shellal saw his light, before he got a fright which, for an instant, paralysed his steps and all but took his breath away. “Good Lor’! whatever es et?” he gasped as something white crossed his path. His first thought was that his fate had overtaken him, and that he would disappear as mysteriously as the two men of Zackey’s yarn. Recovering from the shock and feeling the ground still under his feet, he moved on, his stumbling steps betraying his agitation. “Couldn’ be a whi—a white hare; no, no, was too big for that and et didn’ loup along like a hare. Was et a livin’ crittur at all? Was et—rubbish!” “Pull yourself together, man,” said a voice within, “go back and see if the thing left any track.” Though the sweat stood in big drops on his face, and the gale which met him in the face impeded his steps, he conquered his fears so far as to go back. The thing had passed up the slope, he remembered, near the Giant’s Quoit, for against that he had momentarily leant for support; and there he bent over the ground, his face blanched, his eyes wild but eager as if they would devour the bare places between the tussocks that skirted the trickling water. Two paces above, on the margin of a shrunken pool made by the runnel, and clean-cut as in plaster, the light of the flickering flame fell on the track of a badger. “Good Lor’!” he exclaimed, as the footprints met his astonished eyes; and then hurriedly retraced his steps. The farther he got from the spot, the more strongly reason asserted itself over superstition. He argued thus with himself: “White, wadna? sartinly: the track of a badger, wadna? I should say so—” This with the trace of smile, for he had never seen more clearly-cut footprints. “Have I seen a white badger, I wonder? Auld Dick wance said as much and was laafed at for the rest of his days. No, et caan&rsq............