IT was drawing on towards midnight, and the world seemed very lonely.

There was a huge, round harvest moon in the sky, and the hills were bathed in a kind of spectral splendour a faint and filmy shimmer of silver that left the outlines of objects blurred and elusive, though the scene as a whole emerged clearly for the eye. The wind was sighing drowsily across the moors, while high on the rugged cairns on the hill-tops it was wuthering mournfully beneath the wan grey sky.

And ’Lijah, staring sleeplessly through his blindless bedroom-window, felt a growing unrest in the very marrow of his bones.

He could see down below, in the little lonesome cove, the cottage where Dorcas had now made her nest with that “darned gayte long-legged ’Miah” for her husband, and in the sudden heat and bitterness of his wrath his heart became like a live coal within him. “I’ll have my revenge on un, ef I haang for it!” growled he.

And then he remembered that up on yonder moors whose ferns and granite boulders he could see plainly in the moonlight there was a “gashly owld fogou," where, if a man went at midnight prepared to boldly summon Hate and to “turn a stone" in her honour, his hatred would be accomplished for him “as sure as death.”

“An’ I’ll go there, ef I die for it!” said he grimly to himself.

The village was asleep, and all its cottages were smokeless. There was no one stirring anywhere in the cove. But far out in the moonlit bay he could see the fishing-boats dotting the vast grey plain, and he knew that in one of them ’Miah Laity was fishing, and was no doubt thinking of Dorcas as he fished.

“I’ll spoil ‘es thinkin’ for un ’fore long,” said ’Lijah, “ayven ef I have to sill me saul to do the job!”

And with that he slipped on his coat and boots for he had been standing at the window half undressed and clapping on his cap as he passed through the kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out of the house.

On the moor he had only the breeze for company, and its long, vague wail, as it rustled across the ferns, merely deepened the moody irritation in his mind. He felt as sour as a fanatic and as gloomy as a thief.

To find the fogou, among the bewildering growth of ferns, was by no means the easiest task in the world: for the rude cave-dwelling was literally buried in the hill-side; its entrance being hidden by the rank vegetation that here reached almost to Elijah’s arm-pits.

As he ploughed his way through the trackless tangle, giving vent the while to a superfluity of oaths, he presently stumbled on the entrance to the fogou, almost precipitating himself into its darkness, so suddenly had he stumbled on it, wading through the ferns.

The low and narrow tunnel in the hill-side, with its walls and roof lined with slabs of rock, was as uncanny a spot as a man could set foot in, and Elijah shook like one with the ague, as he thrust aside the ferns and peered into the blackness.

He turned round, half inclined to retreat; but, as he turned, his eyes chanced to travel to the sea, where he could still discern the fishing-boats riding at their nets; and the idea of ’Miah out there thinking of Dorcas made him clench his teeth grimly, as if he had received a blow.

He swung round on his heels sharply and determinedly, savagely trampling the ferns beneath his feet, and strode forward into the pitch-black mirk.

Groping his way in, with hands extended, he presently found the block of granite called the altar, and “turning the stone” in the hollow on its surface, he shaped the while in his heart his rancorous prayer to Hate.

Suddenly he was aware of a face staring at him: a mere face vaguely limned on the darkness, as if a bodiless head were held before him by the hair.

And in that same instant, without a word being uttered, he felt that he had looked in the face of Hate.

He reeled out of the fogou like a drunken man.

The vision was one it would be impossible to forget. He must bear with him this memory, as a man who has committed a murder must bear with him the memory of his victim’s ghastly face.

“I’ll wait an’ see what comes of it,” said ’Lijah to himself, as he ran and stumbled down the hill-side in the moonlight, the thick hair stiffening under his cap.

The months slipped by, and the years dragged on sluggishly, and ’Miah and Dorcas were as happy as ever. They had a couple of bairns to toddle about their cottage, and ’Miah had been fairly fortunate on the fishery, so that their lives were generally sunny and enviable to an extent that made Elijah’s blood turn to gall.

“Thee’st forgotten me, thou darned owld liar that thou art!” said he, shaking his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill-side, where Hate presumably was watching from her lair.

On which he heard a chilling whisper at his elbow: “You shall have your wish, as sure as death!”

Elijah heard the loud thump, thump of his heart. But an instant after, his pulse danced buoyantly, and he went about his work chuckling grimly to himself.

But while ’Miah’s life was harvesting happiness, as his nets gathered abundantly the harvest of the sea, Elijah’s life on his farm on the hill-side appeared to be stifling among the stones and thistles, and a sour and acid leanness seemed eating up his heart.

It was as if Hate had shot her arrows blindly, and they had struck and rankled in the wrong breast.

With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed to prosper. He might rise early and go to bed late, he might pinch and pare as relentlessly as he pleased, every year of his life he grew leaner and poorer, till the scowl on his features deepened permanently among its lines, and in the end transformed his features as completely as a mask.

He was no more like the clear-eyed, whistling young farmer who had gone a-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat-fields, than the wrinkled tree, with its heart rotted out of it, is like the green young sapling in the bravery of its spring.

Ever watching hungrily to see Misfortune seize his rival and set her teeth thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah held aloof from commerce with his neighbours, sour and discontented, and wishing each day to end, in the hope that on the morrow he might see the evil he desired.

Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that Elijah Trevorrow was a bit touched here the villagers tapping their brows significantly as they spoke.

“He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, an’ he’ve seed her. Up in that owld fogou he’ve mit her, he do say. An’ he’s all’ys sayin’ she ha’nt keeped her word to un. Whatever do ’a mayne, weth ’es gashly owld tales?”

’Miah, whose name had got mixed up in the tale, one day called at the lonely farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and reason with him if he could.

But Elijah, as ’Miah approached, set the dogs on him savagely, and the fisherman was obliged precipitately to beat a retreat.

At last, one day in the depth of winter, when the hills were white with whirling snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared.

They searched everywhere for him, but could find no trace of him, and the search was finally abandoned in despair.

Elijah had made his way to the fogou, determined to front Hate and to compel her to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed her life out through her throat.

Some eight months after in the time of blackberries some youngsters, questing among the ferns on the hillside, stumbled across the fogou and crept in to explore it.

They rushed down the hillside screaming with terror; and, when safe among the cottages, began to babble incoherently that there was a ghost up yonder in the “owld hunted fogou,” they had seen its face and it was white so white!

The villagers began to have an inkling of the truth, and went toiling up through the ferns in a body.

“As like as not ’tes he, poor saul,” they whispered awesomely as they clambered up the windy ridges of the hill.

True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the fogou. But whether or not he had again met Hate there, is one of the questions the gossips have still to solve.