the shepherds would begin to
breathe more freely. Then there would come a stormy night, when the
heavens were veiled in the cloak of crime, and the wind moaned fitfully
over meres and marches, and another victim would be added to the
lengthening list.

It was always such black nights, nights of wind and weather, when no man
would be abroad, that the murderer chose for his bloody work; and that
was how he became known from the Red Screes to the Muir Pike as the
Black Killer. In the Daleland they still call a wild, wet night "A Black
Killer's night:" for they say: "His ghaist'll be oot the night."

There was hardly a farm in the countryside but was marked with the seal
of blood. Kenmuir escaped, and the Grange; Rob Saunderson at the Holt,
and Tupper at Swinsthwaite; and they were about the only lucky ones.

As for Kenmuir, Tammas declared with a certain grim pride: "He knows
better'n to coom wheer Th' Owd Un be." Whereat M'Adam was taken with a
fit of internal spasms, rubbing his knees and cackling insanely for a
half-hour afterward. And as for the luck of the Grange--well, there was
a reason for that too, so the Dalesmen said.

Though the area of crime stretched from the Black Water to
Grammoch-town, twenty-odd miles, there was never a sign of the
perpetrator. The Killer did his bloody work with a thoroughness and a
devilish cunning that defied detection.

It was plain that each murder might be set down to the same agency. Each
was stamped with the same unmistakable sign-manual: one sheep killed,
its throat torn into red ribands, and the others untouched.

It was at the instigation of Parson Leggy that the squire imported a
bloodhound to track the Killer to his doom. Set on at a fresh killed
carcase at the One Tree Knowe, he carried the line a distance in the
direction of the Muir Pike; then was thrown out by a little bustling
beck, and never acknowledged the scent again. Afterward he became
unmanageable, and could be no further utilized. Then there was talk of
inducing Tommy Dobson and his pack to come over from Eskdale, but
that came to nothing. The Master of the Border Hunt lent a couple of
foxhounds, who effected nothing; and there were a hundred other attempts
and as many failures. Jim Mason set a cunning trap or two and caught his
own bob-tailed tortoise-shell and a terrible wigging from his missus;
Ned Hoppin sat up with a gun two nights over a new slain victim and
Londesley of the Home Farm poisoned a carc