“They killed my old Cuff,” said the farmer.
Gregory knelt down beside him to look at the bitch. There was no mark of injury on her, but she was dead, her fine head lying limp.
“She knew there was something there,” Gregory said. “She went to attack whatever it was and it got her first. What was it?
Whatever in the world was it?”
“They killed my old Cuff,” said the farmer again, unhearing.
He picked the body up in his arms, turned, and carried it towards the house. Gregory stood where he was, mind and heart equally uneasy.
He jumped violently when a step sounded nearby. It was Bert Neckland.
“What, did that there ghost kill the old bitch?” he asked.
“It killed the bitch certainly, but it was something more terrible than a ghost.”
“That’s one of them ghosts, bor. I seen plenty in my time. I ent afraid of ghosts, are you?”
“You looked fairly sick in the cowshed a minute ago.”
The farmhand put his fists on his hips. He was no more than a couple of years older than Gregory, a stocky young man with a spotty complexion and a snub nose that gave him at once an air of comedy and menace. “Is that so, Master Gregory? Well, you looks pretty funky standing there now.”
“I am scared. I don’t mind admitting it. But only because we have something here a lot nastier than any specter.”
Neckland came a little closer.
“Then if you are so tilooming windy, perhaps you’ll be staying away from the farm in the future.” ‘
“Certainly not.” He tried to edge back into the light, but the laborer got in his way.
“If I was you, I, should stay away.” He emphasized his point by digging an elbow into Gregory’s coat. “And just remember that Nancy was interested in me long afore you come’along, bor.”
“Oh, that’s it, is iti I think Nancy can decide for herself in whom she is interested, don’t you?”
“I’m telling you who she’s interested in, see? And mind you don’t forget, see?” He emphasized the words with another nudge. Gregory pushed his arm away angrily. Neckland shrugged his shoulders and walked off. As he went, he said, “You’re going to get worse than ghosts if you keep hanging round here.”
Gregory was shaken. The suppressed violence in the man’s voice suggested that he had been harboring malice for some time. Unsuspectingly, Gregory had always gone out of his way to be cordial, had regarded the sullenness as mere slow-wittedness and done his socialist best to overcome the barrier between them. He thought of following Neckland and trying to make it up with him; but that would look too feeble. Instead, he followed the way the farmer had gone with his dead bitch, and made for the house.
Gregory Rolles was too late back to Cottersall that night to meet his friend Fox. The next night, the weather became exceedingly chill and Gabriel Woodcock, the oldest inhabitant, was prophesying snow before the winter was out (a not very venturesome prophecy to be fulfilled within forty-eight hours, thus impressing most of the inhabitants of the village, for they took pleasure in being impressed and exclaiming and saying “Well I never!” to each other). The two friends met in “The Wayfarer,” where the fires were bigger, though the ale was weaker, than in “The Three Poachers” at the other end of the village.
Seeing to it that nothing dramatic was missed from his account, Gregory related the affairs of the previous day, omitting any reference to Neckland’s pugnacity. Fox listened fascinated, neglecting both his pipe and his ale.
“So you see how it is, Bruce,” Gregory concluded. “In that deep pond by the mill lurks a vehicle of some sort, the very one we saw in the sky, and in it lives an invisible being of evil intent.
You see how I fear for my friends there. Should I tell the police about it, do you think?”
“I’m sure it would not help the Grendons to have old Farrish bumping out there on his pennyfarthing,” Fox said, referring to the local representative of the law. He took a long draw first on the pipe and then on the glass. “But I’m not sure you have your conclusions quite right, Greg. Understand, I don’t doubt the facts, amazing though they are. I mean, we were more or less expecting celestial visitants. The world’s recent blossoming with gas and electric lighting in its cities at night must have been a signal to half the nations of space that we are now civilized down here. But have our visitants done any deliberate harm to anyone?”