attendance from the moment its mistress stepped back into her cottage and all the time she had worked. The old woman's high voice sounded like ceaseless birdsong—or like the tin whistle the young man had played the night before—as she made the tea, shuffling around the watchful cat to kettle and tea caddy and cupboard and back. I had the strong impression that she talked continuously whether she had an audience or not—or perhaps I should say whether or not she had a human audience.
I took the tray from her and followed her with some difficulty out the door and to the rough-hewn bench in the sun. She lifted the somnolent cats down to the ground and told me to put the tray onto the bench, as the table that normally stood in front of the seat had collapsed the week before when a visiting cow had decided to use it for a scratching post, and it was now down at the neighbour's for repair.
She poured the tea and sweetened her cup with what looked like treacle but she told me was honey, brought her by a friend on the other side of the moor in exchange for a cracked hoof she'd managed to repair.
'You do a lot of animal doctoring,' I commented.
'Yes dear, I'm the local witch.' I blinked, and she began to giggle, a sound so high pitched it had the sleeping dogs twitching their ears. 'I'm not a witch of course, child, though surely there are many here who would tell you I am. Just an old woman who knows her herbs and has the time to spend babying hurt creatures.' She closed her eyes and sat for a while, basking like a turtle in the faint warmth of the autumnal sun. I drank my tea and enjoyed that same warmth on my back.
'Now tell me, dear,' she said after a while (startling me, as my mind had wandered far away to Holmes and London), 'which do you wish to hear about first? My hedgehog or Samuel's dog?'
'Dog?' I sat up sharply. 'What do you know about a dog?'
'Oh, it was the son of Daniel down the road who saw it, last summer.'
'Why didn't I hear about this?' I demanded suspiciously. With the entire moor seemingly living in one another's pockets, why had no one thought to mention an actual sighting of the Hound?
'Daniel is very good at keeping things to himself. His Samuel was embarrassed, so he promised to say nothing, and he didn't, except to me. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the Hound first, then. Make yourself comfortable, child. It's a long story.
'As I said, it was the son of Daniel down the road that saw the Hound. A fine young lad is Samuel, in school now of course, but then he was home on his summer holiday, and a good help to his parents he is, too. It isn't easy for them to be without him, but I told Daniel that his son's mind was too good to waste, and with a little help from me he won a place at the school in Exeter.
'But you're not interested in the maunderings of an old schoolteacher, are you, dear? You want the Hound, and although I might not tell it you if night was drawing in, on a sunny morning, I shall give it you.
'Samuel is a blessing and a help to his parents, and it so happened that his mother's sister up near Bridestowe had a baby the end of July, and though it all went well, thanks be to God, a month later she still was needing a bit of help with the heavy things. So Samuel was sent up every few days to take some fresh-baked bread or a dish of some kind that his mother had made, and help his aunty with the chores, and then walk back the next day. It's only five miles or so, and perfectly safe for a strapping young boy who knows to look out for mists and mires. Not like the city, which can be dangerous even for a full-grown man.
'Well, towards the end of August Samuel stayed later than usual. He was coming to the end of his holiday and, good boy that he is, he wanted to leave his aunty with a big pile of firewood and then finish the repairs to her henhouse that he'd begun. Of course, his uncle could've done those, but you know how boys need to feel they're indispensable.
'Between the firewood and the chicken run, then, he didn't leave until after tea. His aunty wanted him to stop another night and walk back in the morning, but it was a soft, clear evening and the moon was near full, and the little cot she had for him to sleep in was really too short for his growing legs, and his father liked him back of a Sunday morning to go to church, and aside from all that, his mother's breakfasts were better than his aunty's. Too, I think, knowing Samuel, it was an adventure, to cross the moor at night all by himself, when he'd only ever done it with an adult.
'You see, this was before all the stories got around about the strange happenings on the moor, although it was after I found Tiggy, which I'll tell you about in a minute.
'Samuel waited until the moon was up in the sky and then he kissed his aunty good-bye and left. He'd got in the habit of following the roads as far as Watervale, just this side of Lydford, because he sometimes found one of the neighbours driving home and he could take a ride in the back of their wagon or cart. That night, though, he didn't, so he left the road on Black Down and set off up the moor track.
'It's a goodly climb up the side of the moor, so Samuel used to go until he'd crossed the Tavy and then have a bit of a rest before the last bit. Sometimes his aunty'd give him a little something to keep him from starvation in the two hours it took him to get home, and that's when he would eat it, sitting on a stone over the river, waiting for his feet to dry before pulling his stockings and boots back on.
'That night it was a fruit scone with some preserves inside—a little stale, but Samuel didn't mind. He unwrapped it, and was sitting there eating it and watching the stream in the moonlight when something made him look up.
'At that place, the moor rises sharply, so it's quite a climb—too much for an old thing like me, but ideal for a boy like Samuel, just getting his muscles and proud of them. So when he looked up, the moor was over him, and outlined against the moonlit sky he saw a figure of hellish terror. At first he thought it a pony, it was so big, but then he saw how its tail raised up, and then he saw the light coming from the middle of its great, dark head.
'It was a dog, my dear, a dog such as hasn't been seen since Mr Holmes settled the Baskerville problem, a dog to bring a young boy nightmares and keep him locked inside when the sun is down.
'He ran, did Samuel, leaving his boots, his satchel, and his scone there by the river.
'Daniel never even considered that it might be his son's idea of a clever joke—one look at the state of the lad's feet and a person could tell that.
'Daniel wanted to take up his shotgun and go right back out, even if it meant carrying Samuel on his back, but the thought of going out into the night scared that brave little boy rigid. The next morning Daniel talked him into putting on a pair of old bedroom slippers and going back to the place by the river. The boy's boots and stockings were on the rock, right where he'd left them, but the scone was gone and the stone where Samuel had dropped it was licked clean, and the satchel he used for carrying his mother's cooking up to Bridestowe they found some distance off, torn to shreds.
'And a dog's footprints. Plenty of those, oh my, yes. Now, would you like to have another cup of tea before you hear about my little hedgehog?' the old woman asked brightly.
'Just a moment,' I said, thinking furiously and trying hard to assimilate this abrupt development, the fleshing out of a hound of ghostly rumours into a thing of flesh and bone, interested in the consumption of sweet scones. 'This was towards the end of August, around the full moon, and on a Saturday night?'
'That's right, dear.'
Which put it the twenty-fifth of August, the day before the full moon and the day after the courting couple had seen the dog with the carriage.
'And neither of them said anything about it?'
'Daniel loves his son. The boy shakes whenever anyone brings it up, so Daniel thought it best not to tell anyone. I only found out because I asked him what was wrong with the boy.'
'How old is Samuel?'
'Twelve, dear. A good, responsible age. Now I'll tell you about my Tiggy, shall I?'
I rubbed my brow, feeling a bit stunned, but said weakly, 'Do, please.'
'I was crossing the moor one day, back in the middle of summer,' she began.
'Do you know the date?' I interrupted, although by that time I knew enough to expect the answer I received.
'No my love, I'm sorry, but I haven't much need any longer for numbers on a page. I can tell you,' she continued, forestalling the second part of the question, 'that it was in July, and near enough the full moon as makes no difference, and it was a Saturday too, because I went to church services with my friend in Widdecombe the next day.' Even if she had been a schoolteacher, her answer was typical of those I had become accustomed to receiving, and in the end more precise than the answer of a calendar-user to whom days were easily forgotten dates instead of skies and seasons. She was describing the twenty-eighth of July, three days after Johnny Trelawny, and one day
