A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 133 



of winter tempests. They suggested some great 

 mystery of Nature, but were not in themselves 

 mysterious. Different from them all was the one 

 weird voice that greeted him at dusk, and left 

 with him a thought of immortality. 



He would say to the shrivelled figure in the 

 ruddy light of the inglenook, when he tramped 

 into the kitchen after the long day's labour : 

 "Mother, I heard the voice to-night.'' And 

 the old woman would reply, in the slow, quaver- 

 ing accents of extreme age : :< The shepherd is 

 calling to his dog, calling, calling, by the marsh 

 and by the brook. But nothing four-footed 

 ever comes back from the quake. Poor dog ! 

 Poor dog ! " 



The bittern's evening call was considered to be 

 a solemn warning. The peasant observed the 

 utmost care to prevent his dog from straying 

 beyond sight on the outer fringes of the marsh, 

 and himself to avoid, after sundown, the neigh- 

 bourhood of the dreaded spot. So the rare 

 visitors to the marsh suffered nothing from the 

 dwellers at the hillside farm. 



By the end of April, a large nest, carelessly 

 built of reeds and rushes, and containing four 

 pale-brown eggs, occupied a dry tussock of ling 

 and cotton-grass in the heart of the marsh. For 

 some time, every approach to the nest had 

 been vigilantly guarded by the bitterns ; a wild 



