DIGORY STROUT AND FARMER PENDRE

About this time there returned to St Just a native of the parish who had made his fortune in the Far West of America. He was brought up as a miner, but the discovery that enriched him was really due to his love of sport. For, tiring of work in a copper-mine, he took to trapping and big game shooting, and one day in following the trail of a grizzly in a remote gully, lit on a shallow creek containing gold. The claim is worked out now; but in some maps of the States you will see, near the Canadian frontier, a small river marked Digory’s Creek. Amongst the cottonwood and spruce trees near its source, in the heart of the Great Divide, the hunter built a log-cabin, hung up his traps, tethered his favourite mare and pack-horse, and devoted his whole energies to “panning out” the gold from the sand. His fortune made, he returned after a long absence to England, settled for a year in Lancashire and attended coursing-meetings all over the country. It was on his native downs that he had first seen a course, and it may be that the sight of a hare before greyhounds kindled old memories, for Digory Strout frequently found himself thinking about his native village and the wild moorland that runs up to it. At last a longing to see the old place got so strong a hold on him that he resolved to yield to it and pay a flying visit to West Cornwall. It was towards the close of a September day that the carriage which had brought him from Penzance reached the high ground above New Bridge, overlooking the scene he remembered so well. To the West, the roofs of St Just Churchtown were outlined against the bright sea; and to the North, grim and unchanged, old Cairn Kenidzhek crowned the bleak moorland and looked down on the lonely farms lying like islands in the waste. Digory gazed on these familiar landmarks with a choking sensation in his throat, and when at length he came in sight of the row of grey cottages where he was born, his eyes filled with tears. The people of St Just who remembered him when he set out as a youth, welcomed him warmly, and he resolved to spend the winter among them. His decision made, he sent for a famous greyhound he had bought, that he might enjoy a few days’ coursing during his stay.

The arrival of the greyhound was an event in the dull life of the parish, and the reason for the interest it aroused is not far to seek. The St Just men, the best of judges on a rich lode of tin and the points of a greyhound, had no sooner cast eyes on Digory’s dog than they recognised what a perfect creature she was. Such a greyhound had never been seen in West Cornwall before; and when it leaked out, as somehow it very soon did, that she had won the Liverpool Cup and had cost Digory Strout a thousand guineas, the St Just men were all agog that a challenge should be sent then and there to Farmer Pendre of Selena Moor, whose famous dog, Beeswing, had carried everything before it the previous season, and turned the heads of the men of Buryan. No doubt a coursing-match might have been amicably arranged by the owners, but unfortunately some of the miners let fall certain taunts which reached the ears of their rivals and stung them into a state of fury. Thus old enmities were aroused, the two parishes became once more involved in a feud, and Farmer Pendre, who was a hot-headed man, singled out Strout as his enemy. Digory drove about the countryside apparently unconcerned, but the feeling between the parishes grew worse and worse; and the constable at Buryan, foreseeing a fray and being anxious to take part in it, sent in his resignation. Matters soon came to a head. A fortnight after the arrival of Fleetfoot, as the greyhound was named, a fight took place inside the Quaker’s burial-ground between a St Just man from Dowran and a Buryan man from Crowz-an-Wra, and the St Just man got badly beaten.

This was a spark that threatened to set the inflammable material of the two parishes in a blaze; and no one knew this better than the manager of Balleswidden mine, who, as soon as he heard the result of the fight, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and went and saw the parson. What happened in the study at the back of the rectory is not known;............